I Wear the Chain I Forged in Life

Discussion Facilitator: Bruce Cantwell. June 27, 2020.

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"[1]

That was my first exposure to a teaching on the fetters. And Dickens lays out a path for Ebenezer Scrooge's liberation from his habitual reactivity rooted in clinging, dissatisfaction, and delusion. But while we're waiting for visitations from our three ghosts, here's a rough translation of another path to awakening from the sensory experience section of The Four Fields of Awareness.[2]

One understands the internal sense organs–eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind–and their corresponding external sense objects–sights, sounds, aromas, flavors, surfaces, and whatever our minds can remember, imagine, think, create, or produce by way of mental processes.
One understands the fetter that arises dependent on both: how it arises, how it is let go, and how, once let go, it does not arise again in the future.

Now, if your reaction is like mine, or Siddhartha Gautama's students, you're probably scratching your head right now.

The commentary that did the most to unlock this for me is called "The Ball of Honey," which we discussed in January 2019. I used Rosemary's mindfulness of chipped paint on the baseboard in the sanctuary at Leaven as an example.

"Dependent on Rosemary's eye and the paint on the baseboard beneath the table, her eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as a requisite condition, Rosemary feels dissatisfaction. What Rosemary feels, she objectifies: there's a baseboard that needs a coat of paint. Based on perceiving a baseboard that needs a coat of paint, thoughts of the chore of house painting past, home maintenance projects on her to-do list today, and the rebuilding she'll have to do after the earthquake proliferate."[3]

Through experiencing the world in this way, we are chained to our habitual reactivity.
Let's explore three links in this chain to see if there's one we can break.

1. There is a belief in a permanent self: something about us that remains unchanged and unchangeable from the moment of conception through the moment of death. In current psychology that plays out as the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. Is there any upside to holding this view of a permanent self?

This links to ill will toward others as we associate bad actions with being a bad person.
It also links to conceit or arrogance by associating positive actions we performed with being a good person.

2. The idea of the unchanging self also links to the fetter of doubt, the view that there is no path to liberation from our habitual reactivity. This can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we doubt that a medicine will work, we're less likely to take it, and that makes it less likely to work.

3. Our doubt that there is any path to liberation from our habitual reactivity leads us to seek sensual pleasure as the only reaction to physical, mental, or emotional discomfort. At the extremes, this can lead to addiction. In milder cases, it keeps us running in circles.
This links to the fetter of restlessness, which makes it hard to focus and hard to sit with difficult emotions in meditation or in life.

Mindfulness that everything internal and external is temporary and can provide no permanent solace helps us let go.

When, firmly mindful, one hears a sound, one is not inflamed by lust or aversion for sounds.
When, firmly mindful, one smells an aroma, one is not inflamed by lust or aversion for aromas.
When, firmly mindful, one tastes a flavor, one is not inflamed by lust or aversion for flavors.
When, firmly mindful, one feels a tactile object, one is not inflamed by lust or aversion for contacts.
When, firmly mindful, one knows a mental phenomena, one is not inflamed by lust or aversion for mental phenomena.
When, regarding things seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, or thought, in the seen there will be merely the seen, in the heard there will be merely the heard, in the smelled there will be merely the aroma, in the tasted, there will be only the flavor, in the touched there is only the feeling, in the thought there will be merely the thought, this itself is the end of suffering.[4]

Complete Series on the Four Fields of Awareness

[1] Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Pages 25-26, 1843, www.open-bks.com/library/classics/dickens_charles_carol/carol-25-26.html.
[2] “The Section on the Sense Spheres.” Mahasatipatthana Sutta - The Great Discourse on the Establishing of Awareness, www.tipitaka.org/stp-pali-eng-parallel.shtml#38.
[3] Cantwell, Bruce. “The Ball of Honey and Peeling Paint.” Leaven Community, Leaven Community, 27 Jan. 2019, www.leaven.org/waking-up-community-updates/2019/1/26/the-ball-of-honey-and-peeling-paint-1.
[4] "Bāhiya Sutta: Bāhiya" (Ud 1.10), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 3 September 2012, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.than.html .