In the Seeing, Only the Seeing... (Bāhiya Sutta) - read by Finola O'Siochrū

Bahiya holds the record for being the quickest of the Buddha's disciples to reach enlightenment. He only got a very brief training, a few words while the Buddha was on his alms round. These were the first and only words of Dhamma Bahiya had ever heard, and yet he gained full enlightenment as he listened. It's an inspiring story.

Bahiya, we are told, was a respected recluse living by the seashore and known as Bahiya of the bark cloth because his robes were made from bark. One day he pondered his own level of spiritual understanding, asking, "Now, of those who in this world are Arahants or have entered the path leading to Arahantship, am I one?" He couldn't answer this, and we're told that a compassionate deva appeared before him saying, "You, Bahiya, are neither an Arahant nor have entered the path leading to Arahantship. You do not even have a practice whereby you can become an Arahant or enter that path."

Bahiya, we are told, was greatly chastened by this, but luckily not disheartened, and immediately asked where he could find an Arahant to teach him. The deva then tells him that the Buddha is currently living at Jeta's grove in Sāvatthi and teaching the Dhamma there. It's a long way away, some 1,200 miles, but Bahiya doesn't hesitate for a moment to set out and hurry as fast as he could to Sāvatthi.

When he gets to Jeta's grove, he is told that the Buddha is out on alms round. Not willing to wait another moment, Bahiya hurries out in pursuit, and upon finding the Buddha, throws himself down at his feet, exclaiming, "Teach me the Dhamma, O blessed one. Teach me the Dhamma, O well-gone one, that will be for my long-term welfare and bliss."

The Buddha at first refuses, saying that he is on alms round and not free to teach. Bahiya repeats his request again and again, arguing that either his own or the Buddha's life could be ended at any moment. On the third request, the Buddha relents, saying, "Then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus. In the seen there is only the seen. In the heard, only the heard. In the sensed, only the sensed. In the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will only be the seen in the seen, only the heard in the heard, only the sensed in the sensed, only the cognized in the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, then you are neither here nor there, nor anywhere in between. Just this is the end of suffering."

As Bahiya listened to these words, the penny dropped and he was liberated. The Buddha went on his way and just as he had feared, Bahiya died having been attacked by a cow. When the Buddha later came across Bahiya's body, he told his disciples to cremate this and erect a memorial. When they ask him about Bahiya's destination, his future life, the Buddha replies that Bahiya is totally unbound, meaning that he is liberated from suffering and rebirth.

Before we look at the teaching at the core of the Sutta, I think it's helpful to paint a picture of Bahiya for ourselves. One reason is that the teaching itself, as with so much of the Dhamma, invites us to deconstruct our normal understanding of reality, to see that we're not this, not that. Though this is essential, we also have to make an effort to reconstruct our understanding of reality where I am me and you are you and a dog is a dog and so on. This normal understanding is sometimes described as conventional reality whereas the deconstructed version is termed ultimate reality. The spiritual life requires that we navigate both levels peacefully. If we focus only on the ultimate level, this can lead to abstraction. We grow aloof from the world. If we engage with the story of Bahiya, we warm up the teaching, bring our humanity to the forefront as we listen to the Dhamma.

We can remember also that the Buddha always chose exactly the right teaching for each person. So if we can put ourselves in Bahiya's shoes, we might hear the teachings in a more meaningful way.

Some people think that Bahiya was already highly developed spiritually. The Sutta doesn't give us much evidence for this, and I like the interpretation given by Buddhaghosa, an Indian monk and scholar who lived about a thousand years after the Buddha. Although interpretations lose some of the original purity, I think they have a value in their own right. The Buddha's presence, his calm, authority, body language, facial expression, all these would have added hugely to the words he spoke. As his real-life impact died away, myths and stories would have been added to the teachings as a human effort to retain some shadow of his presence. Of course, this will include cultural bias, and we don't have to take these as gospel, but they may make it easier for us to hear the teachings, to detect human warmth in them, rather than read them as a very dry manual of spiritual practice.

Buddhaghosa gives us a prequel to the Sutta, suggesting that Bahiya was actually a novice in spiritual terms, even a bit of a fraud. Earlier, he and others had gone out to sea. Their ship sank and all his comrades were drowned, but Bahiya managed to cling to a plank and survive. Perhaps he was battered against rocks because by the time he made it ashore his clothes had been torn away. There was, and still is in parts of Asia, a tradition of making sheets of cloth from the sodden bark of trees and Bahiya obviously had mastered this skill. From other suttas we see that being naked could lead to being despised and abused. It shows great strength of character that the half-drowned, bruised and battered Bahiya managed to weave himself a cloak, a task few of us would have the patience to manage, even in the peak of health and well-being.

By a lucky twist of fate, the bark cloth works in his favour. When the local people saw him, they assumed he was an ascetic who had renounced clothing, even assuming he was fully enlightened and arahant. And so they started giving him food. Bahiya realised he was on to a good thing and decided to eschew fine clothes and continue in his bark cloth, becoming known as Bahiya of the Bark Cloth.

Bahiya then starts to wonder whether perhaps he is enlightened. There are reports of people mistaking themselves as enlightened because they've developed concentration to the extent that the hindrances are suppressed and they live in a state of bliss. Perhaps this was the case for Bahiya. Perhaps all this talk of him being an Arahant persuaded him to dabble in meditation. He may well have had a mind that concentrated easily. The ease with which he picks up the Buddha's words suggests that. People with good concentration can achieve a state of jhāna where the mind is absorbed in bliss. My guess is that Bahiya fell into a jhāna and then started wondering whether this bliss meant he was enlightened.

Whatever about concentration, Bahiya's spiritual assets certainly include energy, determination and perseverance. To have survived a situation where five companions perished shows a real strength of will. Bahiya doesn't give up easily and once he realised that enlightenment involves his long-term welfare and bliss, he becomes single-mindedly focused on that goal. His zeal for liberation would have been spurred by acute awareness of mortality, as is pleased to the Buddha demonstrate. Buddhaghosa's story of near drowning gives a context for this.

Although we might think of someone who suffered such a calamity as very unfortunate, in spiritual terms the shock of a near-death experience can be a great motivator. This is why we are encouraged to reflect on our mortality, go to cemeteries or view bodies decomposing, so as to make this more real. A near-death experience makes us painfully aware of the lack of any security in this life. We become disillusioned, perhaps depressed, lose interest in the pleasures of this world. When the Buddha realized the reality of sickness, old age and death, it is said that he returned to his palace like a lion pierced in the heart. That state of misery prompted the Buddha's spiritual life. Similarly, Bahiya was determined to find a truth and security which transcended worldly life.

Last but not least, Bahiya had great faith. He doesn't waste any time doubting the Dhamma or his own potential for enlightenment. He goes straight for this prize. With a certain naive bull-headedness, he is only interested in learning from an Arahant. The fact that the Buddha is 1,200 miles away doesn't faze him for an instant.

So Bahiya is an energetic, resourceful, determined character, and because of his near-death experience, strongly motivated to seek liberation. He's blessed with great faith in his own abilities, in the reality of enlightenment and in the Buddha. We see his single-mindedness again when, after his 1,200-mile journey, he doesn't dream of resting but immediately rushes out of Jeta's grove in pursuit of the Buddha, doesn't hesitate to interrupt his alms round, pesters him basically, until he receives the teachings.

Bahiya's story is a testament to the power of absolute one-pointed determination, faith and energy. But this do-or-die attitude is easily hijacked by greed. It needs to be balanced by an equal preference for calm and tranquillity, a sense that all is okay, just as it is. The Sutta gives this very beautiful description of the personage Bahiya saw when he eventually caught up with the Buddha on his alms round: "Serene and inspiring serene confidence. Calming. His senses at peace. His mind at peace. Having attained the utmost tranquillity and poise. Tamed. Guarded. His senses restrained, a great one, Nāga."

This suggests that it was the very presence of the Buddha that allowed Bahiya to calm down, bring his mind to rest upon the words the Buddha spoke, let them penetrate deep enough for full liberation.

The Buddha's opening words, "Bahiya, you should train yourself thus," clarify that this is a training, not an account of what enlightenment is. The Buddha is not interested in philosophy for its own sake, an abstract definition of truth. Intellectual understanding isn't enough for liberation. The truth of enlightenment has to be lived and for this we need training. The Eightfold Path gives the full scope of training, addressing morality, views and attitudes as well as mental training. But in this very succinct teaching to Bahiya, the Buddha focuses on the first step in the Eightfold Path, Right View. It's the way we see and understand the world that's most important. Everything else, our attitudes, our behaviour, our meditation, clicks into place if only we can be clear about what's actually happening in our moment-to-moment experience.

The Buddha's next words to Bahiya describe the bare simplicity of the practice. "In the seen, there is only the seen." When we see, we normally see something. We see a book, a tree, a person. And then we think about it, whether we read it, whether we'd like to read it. Same for the tree, the person. In reference to the seen, there is the seen plus all the thoughts and images and fond or unpleasant memories this provokes.

Now it's possible of course that we don't properly register what we see. We vaguely scan our environment to avoid bumping into things, too preoccupied to bother giving full attention to the visual scene. No thoughts about books or trees or people are evoked. But if we were to be properly mindful, we would detect a quick judgment, labelling whatever we see as irrelevant, not worth thinking about. So there is the seen plus an aversive reaction, dismissing the sight as irrelevant and the consequent decision to ignore.

Could we properly register the sight of a book, a tree, a person and not react, not add any thoughts? Difficult. The term is just seeing and is the spiritual practice we take from the Bahiya Sutta. We train by noticing the proliferation of the thoughts or the desire to avert our eyes, find something more interesting. We then resist the habitual reactions, drop the thoughts, bring our eyes back to the visual object itself, its colour, its shape, its bookness, reminding ourselves that we are seeing. When we train like this, we're coming back closer and closer to the raw experience of seeing. We're dropping our opinions and judgments and preconceptions about the things we see, getting more and more interested in the experience of seeing.

Can you imagine living in a world where we didn't add a thousand judgments and stories, a thousand summary dismissals as irrelevant, as we let our eyes go about their business of scanning our surroundings? The teacher, Gilles Farcet, gives an example of this when he lived for a time in Morocco. He noticed his mind was much lighter than normal. He wasn't as troubled as usual in public. He eventually traced this to the fact that he wasn't reacting to people around him, making up stories about them. He realized it was because their clothing was so different to Western clothing. His habitual way of categorizing people just couldn't work. He had no way of judging, working out what their lives were like, who was rich, who was poor, who had what trade. So he was just seeing the people around him. This gave him a demonstration of the way we clog up our world and weigh ourselves down by adding layers and layers of unnecessary thought to whatever we see. He tasted the lightness of just seeing.

The Buddha uses the same instructions for the other senses. In the hearing, there is only the hearing. In the sensing, this is understood to refer to sensations from odour and taste as well as body. There is only the sensing. In the cognizing, there is only the cognizing. The latter is interesting. Thoughts and images also have their place in very simple, non-reactive way of relating to the world. The thought "book" could arise on seeing a book, but no further thoughts are provoked about whether or not we've read the book or should read it or any other thought stream.

At the very essence of seeing, hearing, sensing, there aren't thoughts, but simple sensations of colour or pressure or vibrations on the eardrum. But to interact in an intelligent way with these, we need to allow several sensations be processed by the mind so as to form perceptions and concepts like book, tree, person. This is happening all the time in the background as we go about our daily business.

I got a glimpse into the extent of background processing going on in my mind one time as I walked into the bathroom of my apartment. Normally the light switch also turns on a fan. But when I pressed the switch this time, the light came on but the fan didn't. I started hearing the fan nonetheless. In fact, I heard every little nuance of its whirring and buzzing as I'd never heard them before. That's because I was listening properly for the first time, knowing something was unusual but unable to work out what. It took a couple of seconds to realize that this was a mental sound playing in my mind, a memory of what the fan sounded like, not a real sound impacting on my ears. My mind had made its own very accurate recording of the sound of the fan, and had probably been playing this every time I'd pressed that switch for the past several years.

Perhaps this is my mind's way of policing the environment, projecting whatever it anticipates onto the screen of consciousness so that the real data can be compared to the memory. I don't know the rationale behind the mental recording, but it showed me how much quiet, clever and accurate processing the mind can do in the background of our lives.

The training instructions given to Bahiya describe the body and mind carrying out their functions quite normally, seeing, hearing, sensing, cognizing. It's only our usual reactivity that's missing. And reactivity, remember, involves craving. We crave more of whatever sensations are deemed pleasant. We crave to get rid of those deemed unpleasant. We crave to ignore those we deem neutral.

We see the book. If we're an avid reader, this will be labelled pleasant and craving perks us up as we register the pleasure on offer here. But if we loathe reading, then the image will be labelled unpleasant and we crave to be rid of this irritation. If books mean little or nothing to us, we label the sight as neutral. We crave to ignore the sight, not to waste time letting our eyes rest on this irrelevance.

We're seldom aware of the craving underlying neutral feelings. But if you try resting your eyes on some fairly bland surface, you might soon feel a level of impatience. Your eyes will want to rove around, see something else. Your mind will probably want to think. This gives an insight into how deeply we crave to ignore sights we feel as neutral.

Craving leads on to grasping, sometimes called clinging. This is where we establish a sense of self, a central headquarters for experience. The headquarters we call me or I or mine can now marshal our physical and mental energies so as to fulfil craving. In Bahiya's training instructions, the Buddha clarifies that the goal is not to grasp, not to construct a sense of self, a central headquarters.

When for you, Bahia, there is in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognized only the cognized, then, Bahia, there is no you to be found in relation to that.

We practice non-grasping in vipassanā. When we become equanimous, thoughts and feelings come and go. We watch our dramas without getting caught up. We have the sense of being the observer of our own experience. We're not interfering, just watching. Bhante uses the analogy of a birdwatcher concealed within a hide.

At times, even the observer disappears. There is breathing, feeling, sensing, cognizing, but no one watching all this. Experience is not centered around me. Awareness doesn't seem to be located within my body as it normally is. When a bird sings, we're just aware of the sound. Usually it's me in here hearing the bird out there. Now there's only the sound without any reference to me at all.

We can still recognize the sound as bird song, and we can still locate the sound, know roughly where it comes from. All the essential perceptions and cognitions needed to negotiate the world are functioning perfectly. We've just stopped referring everything back to me, the hearer, me, the observer. In the hearing, there is only the hearing. There is hearing, recognizing, but no one hearing, no one recognizing. We're no longer automatically mapping sensations and feelings into concepts like me, you, self, not self.

As the Buddha told Bahia, when in the hearing there is only the hearing, then Bahia, there is no you in relation to that.

While Bahia grasped all this in a moment, we can make an effort to follow in his footsteps by bringing to mind concepts of you or that when the mind is steady in meditation. It's easiest to focus on just one, say it's the concept you. In my experience, a strong desire to understand the concept is stirred. Tensions build in the body and the mind starts to polarize. I'm experiencing the effort needed, by an unenlightened being anyhow, to frame and hold a concept.

The calming factors, especially tranquility and equanimity, balance the polarizing effect. I realize that I have to continually let go of the concept for any peace. A very vague you takes shape as an image, as if I'm looking at myself in a mirror, then dissolves again. The dissolving is experienced as peaceful, pleasant, but tinged with sadness as if I'm saying goodbye. Then the desire to form the concept, to know this you, starts the process again. It becomes clear that the desire is associated with a sense of self, an I who wants to know this vague, unstable you, which is continually fading away.

This practice helps us make peace with the conceptual mind. It's the attachment to concepts like you and that which snares us in dukkha. As we train ourselves to steady the mind around these concepts, we slowly purify our attachments. We learn that concepts aren't ultimate reality. The only reality in the midst of a concept like you are the sensations and feelings experienced as I try to hold the concept in mind.

We have a preference for pleasant feelings. These are associated with the relaxation, the letting go of the concept. It's lucky we're designed like that. Our preference for tranquility won't let us get too attached to our concepts. And yet we want to know ourselves. Dhamma chanda can be described as the desire to know our true nature. This desire springs from wisdom and drives the spiritual life. But because of attachment, taṇhā gets mixed in. We want to gain something out of all this effort.

Perhaps it's power. We want to be in control of experience, not at the mercy of circumstances. Perhaps it's the desire to love or be loved. Perhaps we want to save ourselves from dukkha. In pure form, these desires are all worthy aspects of dhamma chanda. But delusion allows them get hijacked by greed. Delusion tells us we are or could be that entity who is in control, who loves and is loved, who saves the world from dukkha.

Only as we sit still, burning with desire in vipassanā, can we start to separate out taṇhā, the greed for spiritual progress, from dhamma chanda, the wise desire to be present with experience, just as it is. The desire to know our true nature stirs us to frame a concept like you, while tranquility and equanimity persuade us to let go of the concept. It's a tight rope.

Because of our deep attachment to conceptual thought, tranquility often presents the wisest option. However, we can go overboard here, come to dread and deplore conceptual thought because it's so disturbing. It is useful to be able to think, however. Even an Arahant might need to think about issues when deciding on a course of action.

The story of Brahmā advising the Buddha to teach the Dhamma could be interpreted as the Buddha's rational thinking mind in conversation with his enlightened nature. Brahmā in Indian mythology represents the wisest being. While he lived, the Buddha had being nature, human nature. The Buddha's being, because it is no longer deluded, is the wisest being, is Brahmā. Thus, even an Arahant will at times need to generate concepts so as to weigh up matters, decide whether a course of action is worthwhile.

The Buddha used concepts like I and me and you and so on all the time as he taught. In particular, he taught the practice of mettā, to cherish and care for ourselves as individuals, to care for each being as an individual being. Being able to frame the millions of colours and sounds and sensations and feelings that arise each moment as concepts—me, mine, you, yours—is a very important aspect of human intellect and interaction. And, at least on this side of liberation, is a necessary basis for compassion.

Thus, we undertake the practice of forming concepts in meditation as part of the path of purification. Although we might sense conceptualization as disturbing a more peaceful meditation, and we might quickly detect ourselves grasping onto concepts like you and I, we cannot afford to shirk away from the task. Otherwise, we simply get attached to tranquility and equanimity. This can lead to the delusion which marked the start of Bahia's journey, wondering whether perhaps he was enlightened.

Working with the conceptual mind in vipassanā links to the teaching on the destruction of craving, where the Buddha advises us to understand experience within the reflection: "This has come to be." This anger has come to be. This peace has come to be. This boredom has come to be. This itching has come to be. Every experience can be understood within the phrase.

At times, when we watch an experience—say it's an itching sensation—we find that it fades away. What are we left with? Our attention can be riveted, focused on the spot where the itching faded, but we can't name what's holding attention anymore. The desire to describe is felt as disturbing. As the body and mind relax, letting go of the desire to think, the focus for awareness broadens, sensing peace in the broad expanse of a mind that isn't interested in thinking. This is a mind that is, for a few moments anyhow, content within itself, not trying to work things out, sort out this from that.

After a while, restlessness or some other hindrance sets in. I often find the mind flickering at what seems like its outer border, trying to expand the circle of awareness. As it peeks momentarily into what we might call the outer darkness, it labels the darkness as that, because it seems beyond its grasp, objective, external. A moment later, it flickers towards a brightness associated with a physical sensation and pleasant feeling. It labels the brightness as this because it feels like me, mine, eminently graspable.

These flickering movements of mind give us a chance to study the next reflection Buddha recommends in the teaching on the destruction of craving: "This arises with that as nutriment." We grasp at pleasant feelings, think of them as mine, because the mind is not satisfied with its own limits. It senses something beyond itself, something external, something it can call that. But the concept that opens the door to the concept this. Our logical mind demands that if there's something external, then there has to be something internal looking out. And so we start grasping towards the body, feelings, perceptions, etc. as me and mine. We become the observer again.

To let go of that sense of being the observer, we need to make peace with the limits of our knowledge. Can we resist the temptation to look beyond what's right here, right now? Challenging, but a worthy practice.

The last thing the Buddha says to Bahia is: "When there is no you there, then you are neither here nor there, nor anywhere in between. Just this is the end of suffering."

When the mind isn't forming the concept me, then there's no location for the self. There can still be spatial knowledge. We can locate books and trees and other visible objects as well as the source of sounds. We can move our body appropriately. We don't get our arms mixed up with our legs. It's just that the mind isn't generating a focal point for me in the world.

Normally, we locate ourselves as here, somewhere within our body. When we see a tree, we think of ourselves as the one who sees. Focusing more closely, we sense that we are identifying with the moment to moment experience of seeing. We're clinging to those atoms of colour that are being strung together to form the concept tree. This is to cling to the sensory process. In this case, the eye and seeing. But clinging is painful.

Realising this, we loosen our grip, relax. It's a relief to let the tree be there, outside of me. Just a tree, after all. But after a while, a niggling doubt sets in. How is it we know what is there outside of ourselves? To our dismay, perhaps, we sense that we are now clinging to the notion there. It's pleasant to think of there being an external world, something I'm not solely responsible for, something I can let go of, ignore when I wish to. And yet I would be very dismayed to find the tree was not there when next I looked outside my window.

Sadly, I have to admit that I've now gone and attached myself to the sense object. In this case, the tree. I'm projecting part of this delusive construct of me outside of myself. And at the moment it's very bound up with the concept of the tree that grows outside my window.

Clinging to the sense doors, we locate ourselves as here within our bodies. Clinging to the sense object, we locate ourselves as there in the outside world. Both attempts to cling are painful. As we let go of these concepts, equanimity grows. Sensations and perceptions associated with both here and there slide from head to heart. We're no longer interested in defining these as one or the other. It's as if the boundaries to the self grow permeable. The heart can now include aspects of the outer world, such as the tree.

If I were to ask, where am I? I would answer that I'm not located at a particular spot, but as a nebulous consciousness, larger than my body, hovering somewhere in between my inner and outer worlds. When we identify as the observer of experience in this way, we're identifying with consciousness, that which knows experience. It's the birdwatcher in the hide, a very beautiful state of being, very worthy.

At least on this side of liberation, however, it's still a conditioned state, a composite knowing of several sensations and feelings. To take another step along the path, we let that observer melt into its underlying nature, the momentary knowing of a sensation, feeling or mind state.

When we can resist all temptations to locate ourselves either here within our inner world or there in the outer world, or in between as the equanimous observer, then there will be in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognized only the cognized. The body and mind function perfectly. We can interact intelligently with the world. The only thing that's missing is the sense of self. The blackbird sings in the tree. We know this. Hearing happens. But no one hears. No one knows.

I end with the epitaph for Bahia spoken by the Buddha: "Where water, earth, fire and wind have no footing, there the stars don't shine. The sun isn't visible. There the moon doesn't appear. There darkness is not found. And when a sage, a Brahman through his own wisdom, has realized this for himself..."