emptyuniverse

Nonfashioning (Atammayata)

There's one more quality of the path that we need to understand if our practice is to be fruitful, and actually lead to the cessation of suffering instead of just reinforcing the same old habits of seeking and struggle that result in adding more suffering to our suffering. This is a subtle, somewhat fruitional quality based on an experiential understanding of emptiness that we've just discussed. It is the understanding that seeking is actually rooted in the very self-contraction (atta) and self-view (atta-ditthi) that we are attempting to transcend. This understanding leads to nonfashioning. Nonfashioning means not turning anything into a big deal or major project. But we need to be clear that nonfashioning isn't a quality of egoistic indifference, apathy, or laziness. We continue to do what needs to be done, but our doing isn't motivated, propelled, and supported by any lust for a preconceived result. On a very subtle level nonfashioning means not turning anything whatsoever into a fixed reference point, which would be a basis for grasping. It means completely pulling the rug out from under our feet, by not searching for security and comfort in any conditioned phenomena: any person, any place, any ideology, philosophy, or religion, or any 'thing.' It's the recognition of groundlessness (i.e. emptiness), where we know that there is no 'solid ground' to grasp onto. It's unconditional surrender. It's a deep, experiential knowing of the empty, ephemeral and fleeting nature of phenomena.

With this understanding of nonfashioning, nothing is rigidly clung to. We let go through nonfashioning, and this nonfashioning leads directly to discernment-release (panna-vimutti), free of any liberation to be sought or self to be liberated. This is nonmeditation and nonstriving. In the Salayatana Vibhanga Sutta (MN 137) the Buddha states:

By relying on non-fashioning, abandon & transcend the equanimity coming from singleness, dependent on singleness [meditation]. Such is its abandoning, such its transcending.

There is no more self-seeking of any kind. There is no more personal agenda. One knows the unreliability and unsatisfactoriness of all conditional states of mind, because one knows the transcendent ease which remains unmoved as conditioned states come and go:

One neither fabricates nor mentally fashions for the sake of becoming or un-becoming. This being the case, one is not sustained by anything in the world (does not cling to anything in the world). Unsustained, one is not agitated. Unagitated, one is totally unbound right within. One discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.' (MN 140: Dhatuvibhanga Sutta)

This is, taken as stated here, approaching the heights of Nibbana. But we don't necessarily have to regard this release as somehow final and irreversible (if it is then so be it). Through our understanding of nonfashioning, we can keep in mind that these discourses present the practice in somewhat of an idealistic way, showing how the release could be recognized by one ready for such recognition. But we don't have to feel poverty stricken if the theoretical model doesn't go exactly by the book for us personally, in every moment, for ever and ever.... Attempting to practice in too idealistic a way inevitably sets us up for failure. This not only adds to our conflicted mind, it is motivated by the very craving and seeking that is the antithesis of the Buddha's message. Idealism is just another variation of the self-view. And so by not fashioning any preconceptions, we can let go of how it could theoretically play out, and intuit the intention of what is being taught, which is, that if we have a somewhat calm and clear mind, then we don't have to turn anything into a big deal, we don't have to try to continue manipulating conditioned phenomena to fit our egoistic ideas of how it should be. In this way we can simply let go and surrender to the way 'it is.' We can experience what the quality of letting go — the quality of a nonfashioning mind — is like.

And the quality of a clear, nonfashioning mind is that of release. In our clear awareness there is no burden, no seeking, no grasping at all. The mind is empty of greed/infatuation, empty of hatred/aggression, empty of delusion/ignorance. And through this nonstriving and nonidentification we realize that 'nowness' is empty of self and unconditional. It has always been now and will always be now. Or more precisely, there is no 'has always been' nor any 'will always be.' There is just 'now.' It is just 'such.' This is the deathless, which is free from any and all ignorant identification:

[All] that is an identity, to the extent that there is an identity. [But] this is deathless: the liberation of mind through lack of clinging [to anything whatsoever]. (MN 106: Ananjasappaya Sutta)

Just this deathless liberation of mind through lack of clinging to anything whatsoever is the fruition of nonfashioning. It is also the truth of the cessation of suffering. Fully realized it is Nibbana — Unbinding here and now, where one realizes the full implication and nonstriving freedom in the statement of the arahants, that:

'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

(back to contents)     (next)