Come and See

When we look inside ourselves in the spirit of mindfulness, we appreciate that everything is constantly changing. Even though this change is happening all the time, we still might not attune our attention to touch each of those changing moments. This takes practice. It is possible, however, to see moments in time as if they were a sequence of frames in an old-fashioned, reel-to-reel movie. With your inner gaze you can perceive objects of mind as if a strobe light were shone upon them. This is not imagined; rather, it is a capacity of directed meditative acuity.

Snap your finger and you see your finger as your form. You hear the snapping sound. You feel the touch of skin on skin. Almost instantaneously, with trained attention, you can sense a very subtle but powerful physiological cascade that is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. You recognize the finger, sound, skin, touch, and snap as if on the verge of naming them. You also have a thought about snapping your finger: that is a volitional formation. And you have a conscious moment of the snapping itself. In this simple, quick action of snapping your finger, all the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness—work together in concert. All of them appear and disappear very quickly. It is possible to touch each of these five steps directly with your attention, without resorting to scholarship or philosophy. This experience of reality is absolutely accessible and exactly what is meant by “come and see” (Pali, ehipassiko).

In approaching this nature of ever-changing Dhamma (literally “seeing Dhamma by way of the body”) so closely, it is possible to become one with it. As if you were inside a turning kaleidoscope, you can see the body as it is and thus know all things as they are. Becoming intimate with the aggregates, you can see their allure, but you can also see their temporary natures and the danger in succumbing to their attraction. The three key features of conditioned phenomena, and even of the consciousness that detects phenomena—impermanence, suffering, and inherent selflessness—all make themselves apparent. Continually perceiving this, you are established in Dhamma. This is what the Buddha referred to when he invited us to “come and see.”

When the senses come into contact with sensory objects, a series of thought moments arises. They may turn out to be lustful thoughts or hateful thoughts, jealous thoughts, fearful thoughts, thoughts of cruelty, even tepid or vapid or totally unremarkable thoughts. Hopefully we recognize these thoughts at the very moment they arise and can feel them as they arise and pass away. The meeting of senses and sensory objects is Dhamma. The feeling arising from that contact is Dhamma. Thoughts arising from that contact are Dhamma. Reaction to the thoughts is Dhamma. We can see it all happening right within ourselves. We want to be fully engaged in knowing this process, intimately involved in it all. This is “come and see.”

When greed arises, for example, we experience pain. When greed fades away we feel relief from that pain. We strive to “come and see” the very nature of greed and the felt sense of the absence of greed. Similarly, when hatred arises we feel pain, and when hatred fades away we experience joy. We can “come and see” the very nature of hatred and joy. When fear, tension, worry, or anxiety arise, we are in pain, and when those feelings disappear we are relieved of the pain. We want to “come and see” the very nature of all these mental states.

In other words, paying total mindful attention to what is happening within us is the essence of “come and see.” When we see someone we like or hear a loved one’s voice, we are happy. When we eat delicious food, drink our favorite drink, or smell something delightful, we are happy. We are happy to touch things or people we like. We are happy even imagining the things or people we like. We are happy to be with what and whom we like. But this happiness is conditional.

When pleasant emotions change to unpleasant ones, we experience unhappiness. When we lose sight of our loved ones, we are unhappy. When we cannot hear what we like to hear, we are unhappy. When we cannot smell things we like, we are unhappy. When we cannot eat or drink what we like, we are unhappy. When we cannot touch or be with whatever or whomever we like, we are unhappy. When our minds seem blocked from generating good thoughts, we are unhappy then, too. And this sort of unhappiness is also conditional.

In other words, paying total mindful attention to what is happening within us is the essence of “come and see.”

We must ask ourselves why we cannot stop the repeated ending of what we find so likeable or the return of unsolicited unpleasant experience. Why must we part from all that we hold dear? Why does it seem that we can never completely rid ourselves of what is unwanted? The answer will inevitably be some variation of “because things change and because we change” or perhaps “because the situation has changed.” Of course, we know that changes in circumstance can trigger a switch from happy to unhappy and vice versa. We see it in real-time. We also see that there is nothing we can do to prevent these changes from happening. Unhappiness arises by wishing to stop the change of what is pleasant and wishing to prevent the unpleasantness from taking place. Our greed to possess the pleasant and our greed to reject the unpleasant always make for conflict. Greed is the source of so much of our pain. This greed is our suffering. And trying to satisfy our insatiable desire is always suffering.

Despite our earnest wish, we cannot truly grasp or reject anything. Grasping and clinging is mere wishing. We are simply attempting to grasp or reject, and we fail because everything is changing so rapidly. Before we can even attempt to grasp or reject something or someone, it has changed in the blink of an eye.

But if our mind is free from the wish to grasp or reject, even for a fraction of a second, we experience peace. Only when we recognize that fact utterly and completely does a natural and sustained letting go ensue effortlessly. We must “come and see” that we experience peace when greed or hatred is abandoned even for an instant; we must “come and see” that we experience pain in each moment when we have mental impurities or unconscious confusion about what really matters. And when those mental impurities are cleansed, we experience peace and happiness.

You can link these moments of freedom together and reside there. This is the treasure of your body and mind: they actually invite us to “come and see” Dhamma. We do not need anybody else to ask us to look. We must expend the effort ourselves, look inside and experience this nature of Dhamma, understand it, and clearly comprehend the unfolding phenomena we find there. We can understand how things come to be—not because someone told us, but because we see for ourselves. We must cultivate the habit to “come and see” what is really going on in this body and mind, without trying to point a finger at others. Pointing a finger at others is the opposite of the principle of “come and see.”

Self-examination and looking into the personal mind is a much more effective way of correcting yourself than relying on others. This is how we practice mindfulness of the mind and of our vacillating mental states. This is how we learn what can be controlled and what cannot. This is how we become familiar with what gives rise to our assorted states of mind. We “come and see” everything appearing and disappearing, and these appearances and disappearances aren’t just what we have in us. They are us.

Often our habitual knowledge of what happens to others is inferential, not direct (not sanditthika), not personally realizable by a wise individual (not paccatabbam veditabbo vinnuhi). We do not know for sure because we are not inside their minds. But we can shift this habit.

From time to time, we can ask ourselves if we are sure. We can discern what is really happening and what is a secondarily arising conceptual overlay; we can know the difference between that which truly is and the stories we tell ourselves. We can recognize that which is unornamented, unembellished, unadorned before we speak or act. This is wonderful psychological and mental training. It urges us to be mindful of the three principles of phenomena happening directly in our own minds and bodies—impermanence, suffering, and not a separate self.

The Buddha realized this truth and taught it to the world; then he passed away. Now it is up to us. We can experience this eternal truth at any moment in this very life. Nobody, no god, no human, no Mara, can turn impermanence into permanence, suffering into non-suffering, or non-self into self. Impermanence remains impermanence, suffering remains suffering, and non-self remains non-self. Seeing this with wisdom, we liberate ourselves from the suffering of believing otherwise.

We should use the mind and its contents as a laboratory for testing our mindfulness. Suppose we dream that we are separated from a loved one. When this painful parting of ways happens in a dream, in the beginning it is difficult to be mindful. And when we wake up from the dream of separation, we worry because of our attachment to our loved one. But if we train ourselves in every waking moment to be mindful, a dream of separation would not worry us. We can perform this training on ourselves, in the personal laboratory of life experience, even without a lab assistant.

♦

© 2023 by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Impermanence in Plain English. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.