The Dhamma Rebellion

Coming to a vipassanā retreat is like staging a rebellion against the government inside our mind. So our teacher told us. And indeed it does seem so.

The mind that has been left untrained for innumerable lifetimes has been strongly ingrained in the many defiled habits that has kept us bound to saṃsāra (the rounds of birth and death) and the suffering that accompany it. These habits such as covetousness, clinging, obsession, conceit, hatred, jealousy, avariciousness, restless searching, mistaken-views, etc., are habits that are so strongly influenced by Māra (the Buddhist personification of evil) who delights in keeping beings trapped in saṃsāra and unable to break free from his clutches.

Over the long period of our journey through saṃsāra, through having fallen repeatedly under the enticing and deluding spells and charms of Māra, we have all grown fond of him, drawn near him, opened ourselves up to him, delighted in and adopted his ways, even worshipped him. Unwittingly we have invited and welcomed Māra into our minds and he has surreptitiously annexed our mind and added it to his domain. And in doing so he has set up his government within our minds to dominate over us.

And he did all these with our docile, willing, and often eager consent. For Māra is a charismatic and persuasive tempter of minds who had enamoured and captivated the hearts of many in the world and won their awe, admiration, and undivided loyalty. We see and hear of many of Māra's prophets on the television, newspaper, and internet everyday expounding and singing praises of his religion of greed, hatred, and delusion. And many there are who have bought into this very ancient creed.

Māra has various means and methods, called his armies (Suttanipāta, Mahāvagga, Sutta 2; See below), which he uses to influence and control our every actions, physical, verbal, as well as mental, to ensure that we remain docile, complacent, and susceptible to his influence. Through the deceptive guiles of his armies, some of which are persuasive while others vexing, or even coercive, Māra employs various strategies and clever maneuvers, winning over the hearts of some, harassing others, and striking fear into yet others.

With the help of his armies he mollifies us with sensual or even mundane spiritual pleasures, and he lulls us into complacency with a false sense of security and happiness, making us comfortable with the thought that all is well and good in saṃsāra. In this way he keeps us satisfied to remain within his domain of influence and under his rule. And if we try to break free from his sphere of influence, as Buddhist who have heard and understood the true Dhamma are wont to do, he uses the same armies to vex our spirit, break our resolve, frustrate our effort, sidetracked and misled us from our true goal.

And so we remain within Māra's domain of suffering thinking that all is nice and good; or we know that we are suffering but are compelled to resign ourselves to hopelessness out of frustration over our failure to break free from Māra's suffering realm; or we are misled and swayed by Māra and his armies away from the straight path that could free us from his grip. In all cases we resort back to those saṃsāric habits that keep us bound to suffering in saṃsāra. This is exactly what Māra wants and hopes for.

And through his armies Māra had successfully established his empire which extends from the lowest plane of Avīci, the hellish region of most intense pain, right up to the highest plane of the immaterial brahmas, brahmas who could for many world cycles bask in the spiritual bliss of the mundane immaterial jhānas. Māra is the emperor, the dictator that rules over this very vast empire consisting of many minds of beings who are each his vassal state. Each and everyone of these mind is as if being plugged in into a “Matrix” that is being controlled by Māra.

Then along came the Bodhisatta who realized that not all is alright with saṃsāra and that there exist an underlying sense of unsatisfactoriness and uneasiness about this whole business of saṃsāric existence, an uneasiness which can only be described as suffering. He realized that we are all moving in circles, revolving continuously and meaninglessly in cycle after cycle of birth, ageing, and death, together with their accompanying suffering such as disease, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair, frustration, etc. He was troubled by this situation and tried to seek a solution out of this predicament.

Māra was aware of what was going on in his mind and tried as usual to dissuade and obstruct his search. But he didn't realize that he was not up against an ordinary Joe. Very bold and courageous, the Bodhisatta was a highly developed spiritual being who does not think twice about having to endure much hardship in pursuit of the solution he was seeking. Even as a young man of royal blood in the prime of his life he renounced the worldly comforts and pleasures of his palaces, gave up his royal power, donned the simple rag-robes of a mendicant ascetic, adopted the difficult lifestyle of an ascetic, sought out remote dwelling places in the forest where he could meditate in seclusion to seek his answer, and even almost got himself killed through extreme ascetic practices of self-mortification. Again and again Māra tried to discourage and tempt him into giving up his quest. Again and again the Bodhisatta stubbornly stuck to his guns and resisted Māra.

One night, after many years of lonely struggle, and after one final showdown with Māra whereby Māra unleashed the fury of his army to the fullest extent upon him, but was defeated yet again by him by means of his power of spiritual perfections (pāramī),  the Bodhisatta delved deep into his mind, penetrated right into the deepest fabric of existence and saw clearly the true nature of our saṃsāric existence. By means of this penetrative insight he realized the path (magga) that leads out of the unsatisfactoriness of saṃsāra, a path that destroy the dominion of Māra. And through this path he was able to make his exit from the conditioned world of saṃsāric suffering and attain the unconditioned bliss of Nibbāna. He had found the solution he sought after. He is now the Buddha, the enlightened one, the first one in recent history who had staged a successful rebellion against Māra and his armies and toppled his government and achieved independence.

Then out of compassion for others who are still in the clutches of Māra, he began to instigate them to also rebel against Māra. He made them realized that they were being deceived by Māra into remaining in saṃsāra and unknowingly experiencing its attendant suffering like a frog in a pot of water that is slowly being brought to boil. He taught them about the deceptive ways of Māra and his armies, showed them strategies they can employ to overcome this evil legion, and provided them with the weapons and ammunition to do so. In his time many, under his direct or indirect guidance, staged successful rebellion against Māra and liberated their minds from suffering. Māra lost one after another of his vassal states. Even after the Buddha's passing away right down until the present time these rebellion are still going in the minds of many. And there are still those who are successful in their attempt.

But to be successful in one's revolt against the dominion of Māra the great tempter, requires that one have a very bold and courageous mind in the practice of Satipaṭṭhāna vipassanā meditation, the only way, according to the Buddha to achieve liberation of the mind from suffering. For when it comes to the practice of Satipaṭṭhāna vipassanā meditation in particular, when we try to build in our mind the grand highway of the Noble Eightfold Path that leads directly out of his realm of influence, Māra will rally his ten armies in full force in order to obstruct our work and destroy whichever part of the path that we have build. Māra is the great destroyer, the great vanquisher.

The first of Māra's armies is sensual-pleasures. Its function is to entice our mind with all manner of seemingly delightful objects of the senses. It dangles these alluring sensuous objects at all the six doors of our senses in order to seduce and distract us from seeing the true nature of our existence and to lull us into a false sense of security and happiness, making us think that all is well and that there is no higher good in saṃsāra than the enjoyment of these sensuous objects.

The second army is boredom or dissatisfaction. This is another army that distract the mind and caused it to become dissatisfied and bored and tired with wholesome practices such as dāna (charity), sīla (virtuous conduct), and, especially, bhāvana (mental-development or meditation) that leads the mind away from saṃsāra. When one tries to go for a meditation retreat to train the mind through meditation this army will stir up the mind, harass it with dissatisfaction concerning all manner of things, e.g. the food, the lodgings, the environment, the weather, fellow meditators, the teachers, the teaching, the strict environment, the time table, etc. It causes the mind to become bored and restless, unsettling it so that it is unable to take delight in the practice of meditation.

Māra's third army is thirst and hunger. Being at the meditation center we have to depend on others to support us with our basic daily needs such as food, lodgings, medical care, etc. But what is provided at the center may not be to our likings and we may long for those familiar things which we are accustomed to have at home. This stirs up the mind with thirst and hunger for those things. And together with the army of dissatisfaction and boredom as well as sensual-pleasures, the mind begin to hunger and thirst for other things beyond these basic needs, such as entertainments, activities, company of friends and relatives, etc. which we are also familiar with but which we are deprived of at the meditation center. The mind will then try to seek an escape route by making recourse back to the first army of sensual-pleasures. It will scheme and seek all manner of ways, subtle or crude, and usually unbeknown to us, to obtain the pleasures that it so craved for to satisfy its thirst and hunger. Along the way the meditator will also cause a lot of inconvenience to those who are supporting him. And when all his schemes failed to obtain him what he wants, the meditator may even pack his bag and run back home.

Behind the first three armies is the fourth of Māra's army, craving. Craving is actually the mastermind behind them that goads and drives the mind to search restlessly for this and that sensual-object in order to assuage the boredom, dissatisfaction, thirst, and hunger that it is being oppressed with. In the process of this restless search the distracted mind is vexed, worn out and becomes tired, opening up the door of opportunity for the fifth army, sloth and torpor, to rush in and launch its attack on the mind.

For those who are meditating in remote and secluded places such as in the deep forest or near a cemetery, places which are not frequented by men, terrifying and difficult to endure, Māra will launch his sixth army, fear, against them. And if they have not set up ample Dhamma defence in their mind through diligent effort to be continuously vigilant in their practice of sīla, samādhi (wholesome concentration), and paññā (penetrative insights), then their mind will become vulnerable and be easy meat for this sixth army of fear. Fear can also overcome those who do not live in such dreadful places if they have not sufficiently protected their mind with the correct practice of sīla, samādhi, and paññā. For one's own self induced imagination can also cause irrational fear to arise in the mind.

The mind that is paralysed by fear will not be able to practice properly and so will not make progress. And if this goes on for some time the seventh army, doubt, will have its opportunity. One who is not progressing in the practice will begin to have doubt about his own ability to carry out the practice; Or he will have doubt about the method of practice taught to him by his teacher; Or he has doubt about the Dhamma itself, whether the Dhamma is really the way towards liberation from suffering. When he has doubt about the Dhamma, he will also harbour doubt about the Buddha, whether he is really an enlightened person. He will also have doubt about whether the Saṅgha, those who have followed the Dhamma and successfully attained the various stages of liberation from suffering, really exist.

But if supposing that he is able to summon up courageous effort to face and overcome his fear by means of diligent application of Dhamma, he will be able make progress in his practice and experience extraordinary Dhamma experience. But the eighth army of Māra, conceit and obstinacy, lies awaiting to ambush him. Having experienced such extraordinary and wonderful Dhamma experience he begins to think highly of himself and begins to compare his achievements to that of his fellow meditators and even his teachers. He may even think that he is better than his teachers and begin to reject and ignore their well-intended advice when they try to point out his error to him. Unless he is able to see the folly of his way, he will not make any further progress in his practice beyond this.

But if he is able to overcome this eighth army of Māra through honest and sincere reflection on the stage of his own spiritual development, and realized that he had not really make any real and significant spiritual progress yet, he will then continue with his spiritual endeavour. Then he will be able to progress further and may even deepen his practice to the extent that there may take place some profound transformation in his mind that will bring about marked refinement in his external conduct. This may in turn also inspire others who sees him. He may progress so far that his teachers become satisfied with his practice and will praise him and even encourage him to share the Dhamma with others. His good reputation will spread among his fellow meditators who will then seek him out to learn Dhamma from him. And as he begins to teach the Dhamma, especially if he is an eloquent speaker, people will begin to acknowledge him as a teacher and begin to show him respect and shower him with gifts. Before long he will even gather about him a decent following of students.

But therein awaits the next army of Māra who had not given up his attempt to crush this rebellion going on in his mind. The ninth army is gain, fame, reverence, and ill-gotten-fame. For he may have had deep practice and enough experience and knowledge to impress others with the Dhamma. But so long as the mental-defilements have not been completely rooted out from his mind he may, if he is not careful, let the gifts, the respect, the fame, and the following of students, get to his head. He may acquire a taste for these and begin to crave for more. This will lead him to begin planning and scheming his way to obtain more gain, respect, fame and following, using the Dhamma as his tool and also justification. To impress potential students and devotees, he may even try to be different and begin to present the Dhamma in a different way in order to pander to  their likings, diluting the Dhamma in the process.

As his craving grow unchecked he will begin to become attached to his body of students and begin to jealously guard his following so that they do not go over to another teacher. Here is where the tenth and last army of Māra, self-praise and denigrating of others, makes its entry. This will lead him to be embroiled in a fierce competition with other teachers, a competition which can only be described as worldly. In other words Māra had succeeded in making him fall from the noble spiritual life he was living by corrupting his original noble intention to share the Dhamma with others.

So the entire path of the spiritual practice of Satipaṭṭhāna vipassanā meditation is laden with many pitfalls wherein Māra had stationed his various armies to ambush those unsuspecting spiritual soldiers who dare to rebel against his rule. Against such formidable armies what hope do the rebels have? What weapons and ammunitions do they have to pit against these merciless hordes? What defensive and offensive measures had the Buddha offered in order to resist, repel and drive them back?

The Buddha provided the rebels with a whole arsenal of Dhamma weaponry called the bodhipakkhiya-Dhammā or Dhammas on the side of enlightenment (often translated loosely as the requisites of enlightenment), so called because they are the forces in the mind that bring the mind towards enlightenment. These are the armies of Dhamma that not only help to set up a strong fortress of defence in the mind to withstand the onslaught of Māra's corrupting forces; they are also the Dhamma forces that overwhelm and drive them far away from the mind and finally destroy them completely. There are thirty seven of these bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas. They are:

1. The four Satipaṭṭhānas: firm mindfulness that is well established in the continuous observation of the body, feelings, consciousness, and phenomena.
   
2. The four right exertions (sammappadhāna): courageous and heroic effort that does not shrink back from difficulties and hardships, effort that is employed in four ways – to abandon unwholesome states already arisen, to prevent the arising of unwholesome states not yet arisen, to arouse wholesome states not yet arisen, and to develop further wholesome states already arisen.
   
3. The four bases of success (iddhipāda): Four mental states anyone of which can predominate over the mind and thrust it in the direction of liberation and enlightenment. They are the driving forces that bring about success in one's practice of the Dhamma. They are zeal (chanda), courageous and unrelenting effort (viriya), a resolute mind (citta), and a clear investigative quality (vīmaṃsā) in observing realities.
   
4. The five controlling-faculties (indriya): Five mental states that control the mind in their respective sphere. Faith (saddha) controls the mind against faithlessness, energetic effort (viriya) controls the mind against indolence, mindfulness (sati) controls the mind against heedlessness, concentration (samādhi) controls the mind against distraction, and wisdom (paññā) controls the mind against ignorance.
   
5. The five powers (bala): The same five mental states that constitute the five controlling-faculties, when developed and made strong, turn into power or strength of mind. The mind that is strengthened by these powers cannot be shaken and overpowered by the opposite states such as faithlessness, etc.
   
6. The seven factors of enlightenment (bojjhaṅga): Seven mental states which when well developed are conducive to enlightenment. They are mindfulness (sati), investigation-of-phenomena (dhamma-vicaya), energetic effort (viriya), joy (pīti), tranquility (passaddhi), concentration (samādhi), and equanimity (upekkhā).
   
7. The Noble Eightfold Path (Ariya Aṭṭhaṅgika Magga): Right view (sammādiṭṭhi), right thought (sammāsaṅkappa), right speech (sammāvācā), right action (sammākammanta), right livelihood (sammā-ājīva), right effort (sammāvāyāma), right mindfulness (sammāsati) and right concentration (sammāsamādhi).

These are the bodhipakkhiya-Dhamma, the armies of Dhamma, its weapons as well as ammunitions, that the Buddha offered the Dhamma rebels to be used in their revolt against the kingdom of Māra. And they have been successfully employed by Dhamma rebels since the Buddha's days right down until the present time to overthrow the dominion of Māra and his armies over their mind.

Each time we go for a period of intensive vipassanā retreat it is to these bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas that we resort to in order to shake off the influence of Māra over our mind. By means of these bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas we rebel against Māra's hold over our mind. With their help we drive out Māra's army and bring our mind to a state of deep wholesome concentration that is focussed on the deep observation of the nature of mental and physical phenomena. And with their help again we  develop deep insights into the impermanent, suffering, and non-self nature of these phenomena, insights that will lead us gradually to break the dominion of Māra over our minds once and for all through the attainment of the true path that leads to the cessation of suffering.

So each time we go for a retreat it is like challenging Māra's hold over our minds. It is, as our teacher puts it, staging a rebellion against the government in our mind, the government of Māra. It is a war where the wholesome forces of Dhamma is being pitted against the corrupting forces of Māra, or a tug-of-war between forces that pull the mind out of saṃsāra and the forces that tie the mind down to it.

But even though we call it a war, we must not think of it as a violent war as in a conventional warfare. This is not a conventional war but a spiritual one. The warriors of the Dhamma, the meditators who are battling against the forces of Māra, are, in the words of another teacher, peaceful warriors. In this war we do not meet violence with violence. No violent force is employed to drive away any enemies, or to kill or destroy them.

How then do we win this war? We win in a way that is much similar to the non-violent ways employed by such social revolutionaries as Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., in their quest to bring about positive change in their society, i.e. through non-violence resistance and civil-disobedience. We win by not cooperating with the government of Māra, by refusing to act on the mental-defilements each time they arise to sway our minds away from the Dhamma. We win by arousing the bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas headed by Satipaṭṭhāna within our minds and with the help of these Dhamma forces we stubbornly stick to the Dhamma no matter how much the forces of Māra try to tempt us to bring us to their side.

But here is where the difficulty lies. For the defiled habits that have been ingrained in our minds under the influence of Māra's forces throughout our long journey in saṃsāra are difficult to break. They will resist and put up a good fight. Māra's forces will also go all out to try and quell this rebellion against their master's rule. So we must be prepared for a drawn out confrontation.

Again and again the forces of Māra may knock us down, knock down our sīla, knock down our mindfulness and concentration; but again and again we must pick ourselves up and rise again with the help of the bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas. With a firm and resolute mind, a mind that is totally resolved on the practice of Dhamma, we must peacefully but stubbornly stand our ground against the forces of Māra and refuse to give in.

And each time we peacefully stand our ground on the side of Dhamma we strengthen the forces of Dhamma within us and at the same time weaken that of Māra. As we do this repeatedly the growing forces of Dhamma within our minds will begin to wear down and overwhelm the forces of Māra until eventually they are driven out completely from our minds.

This is how we can win. We win not by violently suppressing the forces of Māra, for violence is just another one of Māra's many traps. We win simply by peacefully but resolutely developing the forces of the bodhipakkhiya-Dhammas within us and keeping to this course of development even in the face of many difficulties and temptations.

May all meditators be successful in their Dhamma rebellion against Māra. May they be able to overcome Māra's armies and liberate themselves from the unwholesome forces that have kept them bound to saṃsāra.