Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {14}
PROTRACTED WAR:
Land Reform / Crisis / Building a Regular Army
Table of Contents
~ Preface
2. Indigenous Knowledge: Bhavana
3. Contact: Aim /Attack / Harass
4. Mobility: Bases / Fluidity / Agility
5. Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
6. Medicine: Metta / Divine Abodes
7. Retreat: Encirclement / Escape
8. Diversion: Distraction / Misdirection
9. General Strike: Invisibility / Cessation
10. The Guerrilla Band: Camaraderie / Community
11. Independence: Responsibility/ Self-Retreat
12. Intelligence: Education / Reporting
13. The Revolutionary Spirit: Discipline / Determination / Faith
14. Protracted War: Land Reform / Regular Army / International Support
15. Afterword ~ MINDFULNESS: A Balm or a Bomb for Babylon?
~Chapter 14 ~
PROTRACTED WAR:
Land Reform / Crisis / Building a Regular Army
Thus it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army. At that moment it will be ready to deal final blows to the enemy and to achieve victory. Triumph will always be the product of a regular army, even though its origins are in the guerrilla army.
~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare
One of Mao’s great accomplishments during the Chinese revolution was his ability to inspire and organize the movement by the dual insistence that winning was possible and that it would be an undoubtedly long and hard road to victory. He called the overall strategy one of “protracted war.” The strategy recognized the humbling discrepancy between the power of the invading Japanese forces and the native Chinese ones as well as between the forces of the nationalist and communist Chinese. Firmly rooted in reality, it still discerned that the potential for victory lay in a long-term commitment to tactics that leveraged and augmented their own strengths and the weaknesses of the enemy to the greatest degree possible.
In 1934 the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek took a break from their conflict with the Japanese to prepare a major offensive against the Communist capital, Ruijin in Jiangxi province. To avoid a fatal confrontation with the stronger enemy, Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong orchestrated a massive retreat in what became known as the Long March. The Long March lasted an entire year in which they maneuvered the Red Army in a circular swing south, west, north and then east, while feigning attacks in other areas to disguise their movements.
The nearly inconceivable effort that took the army through nearly 8000 miles of treacherous terrain led to numerous casualties from fatigue, hunger and cold, sickness, desertion, and fighting. Of the original 100,000 soldiers who began the Long March, only 8,000 made it to the final destination in 1935.
On the other hand, while immensely costly, by avoiding decisive battles the Long March gave the Communist Party of China the protective conditions that ultimately allowed its army to recuperate and rebuild in the north. Peasants, the social group which the Army was most dependent upon for survival and legitimacy were won over by the magnitude of the determination and moral code of these soldiers who had trekked so many miles in extreme conditions and terrain for the sake of national liberation.
The Long March is a manifesto. It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes, while the imperialists and their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and his like, are impotent. It has proclaimed their utter failure to encircle, pursue, obstruct and intercept us. The Long March is also a propaganda force. It has announced to some 200 million people in eleven provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation.
~ Mao Zedong
THE LONG ARC
In meditation practice, progress is measured by our ever-increasing realization that the enemy is much greater than we ever imagined — much more entrenched and powerful — accompanied by an increasing faith and determination to pursue the cause to its end.
Often, enthusiasm provides the most vigorous momentum in the early days of our practice, when the inner revolution has just begun. There can be a fervor, an excitement, a fascination with every aspect of what we encounter. Sometimes this can actually get out of balance. A yogi becomes so enthusiastic they are even sometimes annoying to the people around them: constantly proselytizing, trying to convince family members or friends that they need to go on retreat, start meditation, need to accept the teachings of the Buddha. If this fervor is not convincing to others it can lead to a sense of isolation. While this quality needs to be tempered eventually, the excitement about the practice and the prospects of liberation are inspiring and deeply motivating. When we look, we see, and we see that seeing is liberating. The sense of transformation can be very fast and significant moments of change can keep us exceptionally motivated. The faith that can arise is very potent and powerful.
But as time goes on our faith and intensity of motivation can wane. As we begin to connect with deeper but also more mundane levels of experience, the long slog of the war, the sense of insurmountable odds can take its toll. Doubt can arise and persist. This path will bring us through the desert — the vast barren landscapes of the mind and body — which is where so many lose their way, their hopelessness not yet purified.
The excitement of our early practice can be lost as we see “the same” material go around over and over and over and over in our minds for years. For long stretches the practice can feel aimless or fruitless. Our usual standards of measurement are confused. This barrenness is an essential ingredient to the process of disenchantment but caught in expectation and mirage, we forget to see the beauty of the barrenness.
As the stars rose we agreed that we must march upon Orion. So we started and marched on Orion for hour after hour, with effect that Orion seemed no nearer, and there were no signs of anything between us and him.
~ T.E. Lawrence
We all must struggle to come to terms with the fact that this practice is not about reaching some perfect state and staying there. Rather it is a profound, unrelenting, and liberating disenchantment with all forms of experience — including the blissful states — that leads us to freedom. In the desert of the heart we are confronted with our longing for more — more intensity, more profundity, more knowledge, more excitement. We are brutally and repeatedly faced with the challenge of the heart’s ability to see this longing squarely, to fully accept it, and to fully abandon it. It is at this stage in practice that many vipassana practitioners choose to abandoned the path for Tibetan practice or ayahuasca — anything that seems more exciting, more engrossing — because they cannot bear the penetrating boredom of the heart’s dullest longing.
How devastating, because this purification is the doorway to our most important deepening. It is the suffering that ends suffering. We must not only bear the desert, the monotony, but even develop a taste for its tastelessness: Create a home there, receive it as a freedom, a great relief, recognizing that it is only the wanting of some other experience that is so painful. It is the wanting that is the war. When we reject this we refuse the quenching the cup of equanimity for the fantasy of a bitter wine.
We are trained to believe that pleasant and unpleasant sensations are the hardest challenges we will encounter. But neutral vedana, especially for long periods, can be much more difficult to bear. People are amazed to see how often they would prefer the intense fires of racking pain to the dry desert of neutrality. Instead of clinging to some distraction of intensity perhaps we can take inspiration from Lawrence’s desert comrades as they came upon an abandoned house in the desert,
The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying ‘This is jessamine, this is violet, this is rose.’
But at last Dahoum drew me: ‘Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all’, and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddies wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the manmade walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. ‘This,’ they told me, ‘is the best: it has no taste.’ My Arabs were turning their backs on the perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had no share or part.
~ T.E. Lawrence
LAND REFORM
Only by implementing land reform, giving land to the tillers, liberating the productive forces in the countryside from the feudal yoke can we do away with poverty and backwardness, strongly mobilize the huge forces of the peasants to develop production and speed up the resistance war to complete victory.
~Ho Chi Minh
The responsibilities of the guerrilla movement are beyond waging war. They must also imagine, install, and defend the social and productive structures of a new society. Once a territory is determined to be stabilized in revolutionary hands, the process of land reform and structural social change must be addressed in order to legitimize the revolutionary program and build the spiritual and material support for the ongoing cause. The peasants have put up with a great deal of instability and risk during the campaign, so there must be something to show for it — spiritually and materially — long before final liberation.
Classically, in communistic revolutions, this has involved schemas of land redistribution where old landlords, business owners, and aristocrats are removed from their positions of social power and replaced by people and systems that are intended to be more democratic and egalitarian. A more fair distribution of wealth and goods, improvements to education, infrastructure, and healthcare, as well as the collectivization of many aspects of social and economic life are commonly the key ingredients to making good on the promises of the revolution and solidifying support among the peasants.
The guiding principle for land distribution is to take villages as units, to allot land to those who previously tilled it, to take into consideration the quantity, quality, and situation of the land, to give a greater share of land to those who do not have enough, to give fertile land to those who have but poor land, to give land which is situated near the village to those who have only land situated far from their houses, to give priority to the peasants who previously tilled the land to be distributed.
The die-hard elements who are determined to sabotage land reform, and the traitors, reactionaries, and despots who are sentenced to upwards to five years’ imprisonment will not receive land.
~ Ho Chi Minh
The guerrilla yogi too must feel some benefit for the work and risks that they have taken. There must be some sense that this practice is “worth it” long before the trumpet of final liberation is sounded. This is not often a concern for the initial stages of the path of practice. For a long while, excitement can be its own motivation. But at some point the revolution must be able to provide what the enemy cannot. It must also wrestle with — and be realistic about — how hard it is to provide a lot of what the enemy already does naturally. Greed can (temporarily) provide experiences of all kinds of gratification. There is no way an egalitarian society can produce the same degree of entertaining and trifling consumer goods without the underlying oppressiveness at its core. A guerrilla yogi cannot expect the same degree of sense satisfaction that they can easily aspire to during the regime of ignorance. What is the satisfaction provided by a regime of mindfulness? How do we learn to value it?
The movement of secular mindfulness will defend itself by proposing that it can offer you all the mindless life has and with more vibrancy and satisfaction. Ironically, it is taught as a kind of gospel of prosperity. Mindfulness will supposedly make us more successful, more efficient, more likable. It will heal our relationships, fix our family, help us enjoy our terrible jobs. With mindful parenting we will have perfect children. With mindful investment we will get rich and help the world. With mindful sex we will give and receive perfect pleasure. With full mindfulness we will walk through life with in a lush and vibrant sensory ecstasy. It is the missing ingredient to everything in life. We are promised fulfillment here on earth.
People are told they can have it all: the job, the partner, the family, the vacation, the car, the house, the golf swing, and enlightenment like a cherry on top. There is no acknowledgement that renunciation (nekkhamma) might be a necessary aspect of the practice life, that we might need to make sacrifices for our practice, that these process — of spiritual liberation and social success — might actually move in different directions. It certainly isn’t even in the same solar system as Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who penetratingly said,
Truth gives no advantage. It gives no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and freedom from the false.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
Indeed, if we want anything out of the practice we undermine it: even peace, even freedom. We want equanimity but it is the wanting that keeps equanimity out of reach.
It is a curious thing to observe how at that time many people had the idea of profiting by the Revolution. They did little favors here and there, everyone of them expecting great rewards from the new State.
~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Any long-term yogi knows this is true. Social life and relationships will not be the same after the revolution. Over time we may become more distant from people or cut down our social interactions and social investments. We may very well become less adjusted to society: more sensitive, less functional: less willing to betray our moral principles for comfort within the dictatorship. When we cause harm or when others harm us we may become more sensitive to the impact of it.
Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?
~ Cypher, the Matrix
This creates a paradox — before, when less sensitive, we had less of a feeling for our failings. Now, more sensitive, we see the deep roots and are more disturbed by them. We may become less willing to undermine our deepest aspirations for the satisfaction of our sensual longings. We become less tantalized by the ephemeral and hollow. With these kinds of experiences as evidence, people unprepared for the impact of insight complain that mindfulness is flawed. But it is not a flaw of mindfulness that leads to this — it is its design. The heart’s desire for fulfillment will never be quelled by attainment, because fulfillment is always fleeting. Satisfaction is always temporary and mindfulness training is designed to see this and to come to peace through it.
We wanted no rice-converts. Persistently we did refuse to let our abundant and famous gold bring over those not spiritually convinced. The money was a confirmation; mortar, not building stone. To have bought men would have out our movement on the base of interest; whereas our followers must be ready to go all the way without other mixture in their motives than human frailty.
~ T.E. Lawrence
The value of this peace, then, is contentment. The dedicated yogi comes to see the value and beauty of small and meaningful connections and is motivated by their fleetingness rather than embittered. This process is a desalinization of the heart. Meeting life with the basic sense of goodness is the early and enduring fruit of the practice. The relationships that we do cultivate are rooted in this goodness. Everyday friendship can feel like the breeze of blessings bolstering us through the day. Our more profound sampavankas become comrades in the most honest and durable sense. Our lives can become more simple, more nourishing, less toxic, less chaotic — based on decisions that honor our own spiritual and material needs as well as our commitments to the world. It may mean we live a more simple life, but it is a more satisfying one more aligned with our values.
The vital necessities of the guerrillas are to maintain their arms in good condition, to capture ammunition, and, above everything else, to have adequate shoes.
~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara
To achieve the spiritual pinnacle of our aspirations ultimately requires us to restructure the material foundations of our lives. This may very well be a slow and careful process that happens over many years but is nonetheless essential. If the guerrilla approach is focused on the military campaign, we must also have a political wing to negotiate the practical dynamics of our lives. We are preparing our minds for the purity of an arahant. But are we living a life of an arahant? To what degree need we be in order to fulfill that possibility?
Throughout the Pali suttas, every story in which a layperson becomes an arahant, they either join the monastic sangha immediately or they die that same day. It is impossible to determine the veracity or general applicability of this dynamic, but there is something true we must grapple with about the challenges an arahant would face in the normal day-to-day life of a householder.
We must let go of all of the fantasies of what we would like full enlightenment to mean. Instead we might nestle into our own experiences and the experiences of the many yogis who have gone before us. While the ideal of the fully-enlightened person who is also fully-engaged in society — as an activist or a family person or whatever — is compelling to many people, we must accept that it is at least possible that while these two paths, though they may deeply inform each other, at some point may need to diverge.
What we see from experience is that a deeply peaceful mind, when equanimous at all sense doors, doesn’t have the tension that may be necessary to attend to functioning in society. Functioning in daily life — keeping up with the myriad tasks and responsibilities of food and family and work and taxes and bills and passwords — actually requires a certain degree of agitation in order to be successful, to survive. So even if it is not true that a person must go be a monastic, it certainly must be a life of great quietude and protection that would allow an enlightened being to thrive. With that in mind, we should always ask ourselves if we are living the life of an arahant? If not, something in the mind will always hold back from letting go. We will progress along the path only so much if we are not ready to destabilize the social foundations of our own livelihood.
The process of learning how to build a life in the Dhamma — in this culture, in this time, in this place, within these social relations, that allows us to support ourselves — is a challenge. This process may take a long time, it may never be realized to the complete extent of our wishes, but we can craft this kind of life and in doing so begin to make the possibility of of a wholesome and profound dhamma life for the next generation that much more of a possibility, and that much easier.
For a monastic, the question of right livelihood is solved. For a guerrilla yogi, the question is ongoing, and one of ongoing importance for consideration and purification. The guerrilla embraces instability as a tactic but not as a goal. During the Buddha’s time it was normal — or at least known — for a householder to move into the life of a wandering ascetic. The social relations supported it. Society valued that renunciation and so food, shelter, medicine, and robes were offered to monks and nuns in a way that deeply honored these spiritual value. These people let go, but society was there to catch them. It is not so in our times.
A guerrilla yogi needs a position of some stability from which to fruitfully observe and engage the instability of all phenomena. Stability is good. Stability is supportive. It does not help to enter the wilderness of the mind from a life that is chaotic. What measures as stable for any of us can be relative and in response to conditions. It is not simply a matter of wealth, though poverty, ambient violence, and lack of protection in many ways will certainly lead to less stability from which to launch our attack. Whatever stability we create we must also train ourselves to abandon it when the time is right.
The guerrilla yogi has the razor’s edge challenge of trying to get free from the cycles of the world without fully withdrawing from it. They maintain a foothold in the society way of life but must slowly train in the recognition that at some point, both feet must firmly be on the path of renunciation. We develop the conditions of safety and security to use as artillery in the battle of insight that develops a more profound safety and security independent of conditions.
Western Dharma has not yet configured the social mechanisms that will allow all those who long for intensive retreat to be able to do fulfill that wish, and we should aspire and conspire to build those tools and create those resources and make them as accessible as possible. Until then, we have to find ways of making do, of deepening our practice and our commitment to liberation in all the nooks and crannies of our lives where there is room to gather our attention and create protective conditions — so that when we do have the opportunity to sit for a longer period of time, we ride the momentum of a practice that is powered by the energy of our daily lives.
There are many variables in our lives that make this kind of retreat impossible but also create the general conditions that are supportive to insight. It may mean staying in a job we don’t like for longer than we’d like for the sake of some financial stability. But it also may mean taking a risk and leaving a job so that we are not betraying our deepest longing for ourselves each day we work against our self-interest. Sometimes we have to change our lives dramatically, let go of some friends, gain others, move away from some relationships with family members, or finding ways to bring them more close.
People must contribute money in proportion to the money they have. Farmers will be required to furnish a certain share of their crops to guerrilla troops. Confiscation, except in the case of businesses run by traitors, is prohibited.
~ Mao Zedong
Much of our practice can look like the process of recreating what was coined by the anarchist Hakim Bey as “Temporary Autonomous Zones,” periods of time and space where radical experiments in freedom are explored but never intended to be permanent. The consciousness of their inherent limitability is what gives them strength and potential but one for which a revolutionary must have a long-scale view of history in order to expect satisfaction and development from. Occupy Wall Street is an important example in our era of a strategy in which people spontaneously and collectively took to the streets in the form of experimental, exploratory, radical presences that helped seed, incubate, flower, and disseminate ideas and methods across time and space. The tactics of the Temporary Autonomous Zone as they arise and disappear over time, slowly perforate society and provide us with the experience of freedom that is necessary to give us the taste we are longing for, something of a north star in our escape from the subjugation we are freeing ourselves from. Their significance is not lessened because of their temporary nature. In fact, their ephemerality is the essence of their strategic value. For the guerrilla yogi, a period of retreat, a trip to the bathroom, a moment of nibbana are all TAZs that help build our momentum without cultivating attachment or the wrong view that they should be permanent.
The path of liberation that the Buddha laid out was most coherently designed and propagated for monastics — social renunciates who abandoned the burdens and responsibilities of society to pursue this path without distraction. This basic fact of livelihood means that our approach as lay people will have a wide variety of intensity: periods where our efforts are more general and relaxed, and periods where we can practice with more intense concentration and protection.
CRISIS / POLARIZATION / CONFLICT
…a Marxist cannot regard civil war, or guerrilla warfare, which is one of its forms, as abnormal and demoralizing in general. A Marxist bases himself on the class struggle, and not social peace. In certain periods of acute economic and political crises the class struggle ripens into a direct civil war, i.e., into an armed struggle between two sections of the people. In such periods a Marxist is obliged to take the stand of civil war. Any moral condemnation of civil war would be absolutely impermissible from the standpoint of Marxism.
~ V.I. Lenin
When guerrilla warfare is enough to topple a regime or to vanquish an invading force, it is through the practice of constant destabilization: by undermining all normal functioning of society, the resistance forces bring a nation to crisis and make it ungovernable. By forcing government leaders to take more oppressive measures, their inherent brutality is exposed and the population resists with greater and greater volatility. If foreign pressures are enough, if the rebels can actually manage civic responsibilities, and if the social sector is sufficiently organized and supportive, this period of crisis can cause a power structure to collapse on its own, without ever leading to full scale war. In this opening, the revolutionary regime moves in and takes the reins.
The polarization of society and a consequent collapse of state power is a direct result of sustained violence on the part of a revolutionary minority.
~ Carlos Marighella
The dangers of this approach should be obvious. There are numerous examples around the world where intensifying crisis and deepening polarization led only to chaos, suffering, and prolongation of hardship. The entrenched forces tend to dig in more deeply, subjugating the local population to more intense pressure, after which they are more likely to turn on the revolutionaries and side with the forces of familiar stability — as horrendous as it might be. The independence movement in Northern Ireland, for example, failed when it became clear that the people were weary and tired of years of violence and upheaval.
The guerrilla yogi must be extremely sensitive to how much crisis they want to introduce into their system, how far toward instability they can wisely push their efforts. The natural and liberatory collapse of the dictatorship of Self as a result of insight is entirely different than psychotic or life-structure break that leads to ungovernable chaos in our lives. As said in an earlier chapter, I have had students so enthusiastic about the practice that they abandon their jobs, homes, and network of support to go practice intensively for long periods in Asia. There are times when this has been wise and fruitful but more times when it has proven catastrophic: people have dismantled the foundations of their life’s stability only to jump into a fire that is much too hot and find that they needed to take a slower approach to their unbinding — a process now hampered by the need to rebuild the foundations of their livelihood.
Still, there have been more of examples of the opposite, where people fit retreats into their life structure on occasion but never take enough risk, aren’t putting enough on the line, to make real progress. There ought to be some degree of revolutionary polarization in our lives, of taking a stand in regards to which side are we on — but a guerrilla yogi should always stay sensitive to the dials of this intensity and learn how to adjust and respond appropriately to changing conditions.
It is not just bhavana that can push our lives toward crisis, but dana and sila as well. As mentioned earlier, I spent 10 years refusing to pay my federal income taxes because I felt that the amount going to pay for war and oppression was out of alignment with my basic moral precepts. It put my life in an intense period of purification that ultimately was too destabilizing for my life and mind to stay with, but I did not regret the intention or the process I put myself through. If we commit to some aspect of social justice in our lives as a moral stand, we should expect a process of purification to result from that. It is essential to learn to manage the volatility of that purification with skill. We reach, we strain, but not to the degree that it weakens our capacity for the fluidity tactics of the guerrilla yogi — for self-care, sustainability, wellness — or where our motivation becomes distorted.
We cannot and should not completely shy away from the tension we are trying to build in the system of our lives. Even if the current internal regime is not ready to collapse, not ready to be replaced by the revolution of the heart, some pressure must be exerted, some strain with samsara must be attuned to. The pain of dukkha must be felt. We cannot make progress without letting go of things, without the ethic of renunciation at the heart of our practice. We will have to let go of all of the world eventually, either through death or nibbana, and if we don’t practice in the small ways, we will never be able to do it in the big way.
BUILDING A REGULAR ARMY
That is one of the clear things about guerrilla forces in modern war: they may be able to hold out, but they cannot win except in combination with striking forces that can meet the enemy in open battle.
~ Bert “Yank” Levy
As we progress, certain aspects of the path become easier. Much easier. Other aspects become harder. Much harder. We can expect that as we get closer and closer to the core patterns of the heart’s ignorance, the intensity of engagement will increase. At the same time, the degree of training that we have under our belts at that point is immense, making us increasingly capable of confronting the enemy directly.
It is very rare that a war of liberation can be won solely along the lines of guerrilla warfare. In general, and over time, a traditional army will likely need to be created, trained, and perfected: based on the guerrilla training but also capable of increasingly intense, positional, and direct engagement with the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion in the heart/mind.
Our internal discipline must be strengthened. The soldiers must be educated politically. There must be a gradual change from guerrilla formations to orthodox regimental organization. The necessary bureaus and staffs, both political and military, must be provided. At the same time, attention must be paid to the creation of suitable supply, medical, and hygiene units. The standards of equipment must be raised and types of weapons increased. Communication equipment must not be forgotten. Orthodox standards of discipline must be established.
~ Mao Zedong
What does this traditional, positional warfare look like? It is the ability to hold ground and successfully defend against retaliation and reprisal. Over time, the capacity of the 7 factors of awakening (bojjhanga of mindfulness, energy, rapture, calm, concentration, and equanimity) as a unified force is greatly increased. With this, we create an altogether different caliber of weapon in the war against Mara. When the 5 faculties (faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom) gain in strength, they achieve a different degree, and even have a different name, “powers” (bala) as enormously forceful transformative and transcendent capacities.
Sariputta, all the words were true, yet listen to what I have to say. Here, Sariputta, the bhikkhu, having partaken of his meal and returning from his alms round sits in the cross legged posture. Setting his body erect, bringing his mindfulness to the fore, he determines “Until my mind is released from desires, I would not change this posture.” Such a bhikkhu, Sariputta, adorns most the Gosinga Sala forest.
~ Buddha, Mahagosinga Sutta
Over a lifetime of practice it is at some point important to explore and develop the mind’s capacity for jhāna — concentration to the degree of classic absorption. Jhāna can help us clarify our understanding of many aspects of the practice: the difference between concentration and mindfulness, the relationship between mind and body, etc. More commonly, in pursuit of absorptive states people become enamored, transfixed, seduced by experience and resist the discomforts of bare vipassana. They cannot see their attachment to pleasant mind-states, and over and over again use them to avoid pain and acquire pleasure. Their deeper practice is perpetually derailed based on a hidden identification with these experiences.
People’s practice should be well-established and mature before moving into these explorations, preferably after they have had an initial experience of nibbana. Only then can jhāna be more safely utilized for their sincere value and not provide more ammunition and power to the forces of delusion in the heart. Ultimately, the most important thing to remember is that khanika samadhi, momentary concentration that is developed through rigorous vipassana practice, has the capacity to bring the mind to “access concentration” which is a vipassana jhāna, entirely sufficient for the cause of deepening insight.
The fundamental problems are: first, spiritual unification of officers and men within the army; second spiritual unification of the army and the people; and, last, destruction of the unity of the enemy.
~ Mao Zedong
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was (1) to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] (3) that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
~ Karl Marx
Marx predicted that the perfected communist society would be classless, and since the State is an important mechanism by which one class maintains power over another, it would eventually be rendered obsolete by the proletarian revolution. But he also recognized that immediately following the revolution, counter-revolutionary elements of the owning class would try to undermine the revolution, re-establish themselves as the ruling party, and reimpose the old social relations. To defend against this inevitable reaction, Marx argued that in the period directly after the revolution, the State, now controlled by the proletariat, would actually need to be maintained in order to protect the revolution until that time which bourgeoisie elements were sufficiently integrated into the new relations of production of the new society.
This notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was intended to be a transitional period, after the initial revolutionary act and before the revolution is entirely matured. It is a tension that modern communists continue to wrestle with: Should the post-revolutionary society be in some sense “less free” in order to stabilize the revolution? If so, at what point do the efforts to stabilize the revolution entrench a bureaucratic class and undermine the progress of the revolution?
History has shed skeptical light on the notion that the State will simply “wither away,” as Marx and Engels imagined. What has mostly been seen in the post-revolutionary societies is an increased consolidation of power in the state and a the formation of a new hierarchical society simply played out along a different kind of class lines. Though none of the communist revolutions so far have followed the historical course Marx and Engels prescribed, a critique of the un-democratic and consolidating tendencies of the dictatorship of the proletariat are legitimate — concerns that anarchist critics feared all along.
However we feel about the notion of a proletarian dictatorship, history shows that Marx’s concern was a fair one. After learning that the collapse of the democratic Guatemalan revolution resulted from CIA and capitalist interference with their internal democratic process, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara recognized that their revolution in Cuba could only succeed with a certain degree of autocratic organization. It is hard to argue with the reasoning, especially with the hindsight of decades of CIA plots to overthrow the Castro regime, the Allende regime in Chile, and their undermining of Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Colombian, Venezuelan, Peruvian, and Bolivian (to name a few) revolutionary movements.
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariate.
~ Karl Marx
The metaphor for the guerrilla yogi is an important one. First is the notion that the success of the revolution comes at various stages. The Theravada framework recognizes four distinct stages of enlightenment: the stream enterer (sotāpanna), the once-returner (sakadagami), the non-returner (anāgāmī), and the fully enlightened (arahant). As the revolutionary forces of our minds reach their pinnacle of power and skill, they realize increasingly profound insight into the nature of phenomena. The deepening stability of mind in a wider and wider range of territory need only be for a moment to produce the right conditions under which the mind can puncture a hole in the “whole mass of suffering.”
There are stories in the suttas of people for whom these four successive stages happened in quick succession, as with the Buddha himself. Most of the time, though, practitioners have a breakthrough experience and it takes quite a few years for the insight to be fully digested and for the mind to restabilize to a degree that the forces of liberation are able again to penetrate the fortress of delusion, each time with deepening impact. The first experience of this is considered to be a success from which the yogi can never backslide. The inevitability of final liberation has been secured, though it may still take many lifetimes.
For us, it was a victory that meant that our guerrillas had reached full maturity. From that moment on, our morale increased enormously, our determination and hope for victory also increased, and although the months that followed were a hard test, we now had the key to the secret of how to beat the enemy. This battle sealed the fate of every garrison located far from larger concentrations of troops and every small army post was soon dismantled.
~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara
In our spiritual path, even after we achieve the seemingly impossible initial stage of enlightenment and are considered sotāpanna, stream enterer, our battle has really only just begun. The long path from stream winner to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stage — final liberation — is likely to be an arduous one, where we use our training to tackle more and more established strongholds of delusion in more and more subtle corners of the mind. It is certainly one place where the necessity of a true sampavanka is clear. The texts say that only a Buddha can surely know the degree of attainment of any person. And so any evaluation of our progress along the path of insight should be protected in the discrete and careful context of the teacher-student relationship.
There is no formula about when and where to get more restrictive or more slack in our approach. But remembering the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is crucial to remember that after any meaningful experience of insight we cannot simply ease up and think our work is done. Very often people achieve a breakthrough to the depth of practice only to find, in the words of Robert Aiken Roshi, “it doesn’t stick.” This is partly because people begin to put their guard down and become arrogant and over-certain about their attainments. They don’t recognize that at best they have pushed Mara, our internal bourgeoisie, into a corner from which he is desperate to escape. If anything we are called to be more vigilant in our practice because any success of ours in practice is an existential threat to Mara, making him more dangerous.
An initial enlightenment experience is usually a very small glimpse into the freedom of the unconditioned. But this glimpse alone is said to uproot identity view, attachment to rights and rituals, and doubt in the teachings. From there, the principles of our approach have not changed and our training is best served by continuing to perfect the guerrilla approach. Our technique is still in need of a lot of development, but our capacity to show up fully to more and more direct confrontation with greed, hatred, and delusion is also evident.
Realization of 2nd stage puts a bigger dent in the armor of delusion, but most of our defilements are still left intact. It is said that the stage of the Sakadagami the strength of sense-desire and ill-will are greatly damaged.
It is absolutely natural and inevitable that the uprising should assume the higher and more complex form of a prolonged civil war embracing the whole country, i.e., an armed struggle between two sections of the people. Such a war cannot be conceived otherwise than as a series of a few big engagements at comparatively long intervals and a large number of small encounters during these intervals.
~V.I Lenin
At the 3rd stage of enlightenment, the mind has entirely mastered concentration and so has developed the capacity of a full-strength army that can engage Mara head-on. It is said that the anāgāmī has totally uprooted craving and ill-will, though the subtle and powerful fibers of delusion are not yet totally eradicated. Surely the tools of the guerrilla are perfected and still in use but they are complemented by a magnificent momentum of strength and purity of mind that pushes undeterred toward the final goal.
The third stage will be the last in the protracted war, and when we talk of persevering in the war to the end, we mean going all the way through this stage… In the third stage guerrilla warfare will again provide strategic support by supplementing mobile and positional warfare, but it will not be the primary form as in the second stage.
~ Mao Zedong
FREEDOM
Someday this war’s gonna end.
~ Colonel Bill Kilgore, Apocalypse Now
The mind of an Arahant is totally quenched, totally at peace. Like a hand moving freely through the air, the liberated mind is entirely unhindered by attachment or aversion and finds no resistance anywhere. Its unwavering aim is love, compassion, sympathy, and peace. Freed entirely from conceit, from restlessness, and ignorance, the arahant is unoppressed by anything they encounter.
Not harsh, not greedy, not perturbed, everywhere in tune: this is the reward, I say when asked, for those who are free from pre-conceptions. For one unperturbed, who knows there is no accumulating, abstaining, unaroused, he sees security everywhere.
~ Buddha, Attadanda Sutta
We are trained to believe that security comes through control. The Self is a pattern rooted precisely in the insecurity we feel in the uncontrollability of nature, of life. The powerful impulses of the mind to consolidate and cohere reality through grasping, rejecting, and fantasy — are the most fundamental way in which we try to stop and solidify all that is unstable and changing. That pattern ends when we no longer feel threatened by reality. As the mind is more fully trained in reality — knows it’s objects inside and out, up and down, through and through — it develops greater and greater ease within the uncontrollable.
What use is there for a well
if there is water everywhere?
When cravings root is severed
What should one go about seeking?
~ Buddha, Udana
When one sees clearly, there is understanding. When there is understanding, there is acceptance. When there is acceptance there is fearlessness. When there is no fear, the mind will let go. Thus we cannot expect the mind to let go until it is seeing clearly.
Arahantship may seem like an unattainable fantasy for many of us. On one hand, it is good to be humble and to respect the challenge of the path. But while a mind entirely freed from all hindrance is indeed a lofty goal whose pace of progress can feel insurmountable, it is also nothing that isn’t available to us directly in the experience of a single moment of mindfulness. If we develop a taste for the relief of that moment — of the refreshing and nourishing condition it creates in the heart — full enlightenment is the logical, natural, and inevitable conclusion of any effort we make to develop that capacity.
This is the value and function of chanda, the desire to act. None of this will happen on its own. We must put forth the effort now to attain that which our heart so powerfully longs for. And we must get in touch with the pain of this longing and use it as a motivator to achieve that freedom which is beyond comprehension.
We always have the option of heading to the monastery to take robes and ordain as monastics. Just knowing that is an incalculable refuge. However it is worth considering that for those of us seeking full liberation in these times we may have a responsibility to figure out how to do it as lay people in the social relations of our age. The west is in need of arahants and every experiment and effort we make toward that end will be of fruit to ourselves and to future generations looking for guidance and models of arahants who lived lives similar to theirs, born into conditions similar to theirs, folded their revolution back into society for the benefit of all.
We can do this. It is possible. But it will not happen on its own. It takes a profound development of skills that are considered dangerous to the regime of delusion we have lived under all our lives. Our skills of love and wisdom are not only a threat to the empire of our own delusion, but also to the greater society around us that is formed under Mara’s influence. Few will understand our longing nor the methods that we must take to cultivate the liberating power of the mind. Sangha and Sampavanka can support and inspire us. It is not possible to do it without them. But ultimately, our determination must come from within as our success or failure depends entirely upon our own efforts.
Talaputa Thera was a monk during the time of the Buddha. Trained as an actor, he came to the holy life after years of common disregard for his mind. After meeting the Buddha, he was eventually moved to abandon that life and live as a renunciate to follow the way of peace. “In no long time,” as it was commonly said, he himself became an arahant and achieved that happiness of peace which people of the ages have aspired to. Here are his words of longing as a layman, that may help incite the same beautiful aspiration toward freedom in our own hearts,
O when will I come to live in mountain caves,
divorced from desire,
seeing clearly the impermanence of all that comes to be?When will I, wearing patchwork robes,
be a true saint of yellow cloth,
without a thought of what is ‘mine’ — and from all cravings purified,
with lust and hate and illusions slain,
to the wild woods gone, and in bliss abide?When will I see and know this body as unstable
a nest of dying and disease, oppressed by age and death,
and live free from fear, alone within the woods?When will I, with insight’s sharpened sword
cut this vine of desire,
with all its tendrils twining far and strong,
breeder of many fears, bearer of pain and woe?
Yes, when will it come to be!?When will I draw the sageʻs sword
forged of wisdom with fiery splendor
And swiftly shatter Mara and his host,
While seated still in the lionʻs pose?When will I be seen in the noble company
of those who hold the Path in reverence,
given to noble toil, masters of their faculties
they who see to the heart of things,
When will this come to be?When will slackness, hunger, and thirst distress me no more,
nor wind, nor heat, nor insects nor creeping things wreak harm
while I practice bent on my own goal in the wilderness?O when will I, composed, intent,
with clarity come to touch
that which the great Sage understood -
the Four Noble Truths -
so difficult to see.
When will it be?When will I, fastened to meditation’s calm
with wisdom see the innumerable sights and sounds,
odors, tastes, physical sensations, and objects of the mind
as things ablaze and burning?When will I be unmoved by abusive speech,
and even when my praise is sung,
again be stilled in peace?
When will this come true for me?When wIll I hold all the factors of my life:
wood, grass, vines, and all the countless objects known by sense, internal or outside,
judging them all alike — hollow, impermanent?When will the purple storm-cloud of the rains break above my head
and with fresh torrents drench my robes in the woods,
in which I walk my way
along the Path the Seers have trod before?
When will this thing come to be?When in a mountain cave, having heard the peacock’s cry,
that crested twice-born bird down in the wood,
shall I arise and summon thought and will
for attaining the ambrosial deathless?O when will I, by spiritual powers
cross over the Gangā, Yamunā, Saraswtī rivers
unsinking, yes, float over the awful mouths
of hell-flung ocean waters?
Yes, when will this come to be?When, like a charging elephant in battle,
shall I break through desire for sensual pleasure,
and, rapt in meditation, shun the marks
of outward beauty?O when will I, like a pauper pressed
discover a hidden treasure,
and be filled with joy,
having attained the refuge of the Great Sage?
Yes, when will these things come to be?
~Talaputa Thera
Click here for the Afterword: MINDFULNESS: A Balm or a Bomb for Bablyon?
Click here for Chapter 12 (INTELLIGENCE:
Reporting / Education / International Support)
