Natural Dharma Growth

by Gil Fronsdal

An arrow in the heart is an analogy used by the Buddha for debilitating human suffering (dukkha). Pulling out the arrow is liberation. A hunter’s deer trap and a fisherman’s fishhook were his analogies for becoming caught in the web of human attachments. Sewing clothes together represents how craving sews beliefs, stories, and emotions into world views and identities. In the verse above, dismantling all that is constructed by craving is illustrated by dismantling a house. Elsewhere, the Buddha describes this as a wave flattening a sandcastle and the breaking of a clay pot.

All these analogies utilize human-made objects that would not exist in nature without human ingenuity and manufacture. They are artifacts of human creation, synthetic products not grown or created by natural, non-human processes.

The Buddha consistently used synthetic analogies for craving and clinging and the challenges they create. He analogized mental hindrances as extensive farmer-built irrigation channels. As the channels can drain a river of its water, hindrances can drain the mind of wisdom. Just as closing the irrigation channels restores the water and strong current so the river can flow far, abandoning the hindrances restores the power of the wisdom which “knows one’s own welfare, the welfare of others, and the welfare of both” and ultimately leads to liberation.

Using human-made objects as analogies for the world of human suffering suggests that suffering is, often enough, a human construct. A purpose of Buddhist practice is to deconstruct and destroy these synthetic made-up worlds that bring us so much emotional pain.

In contrast to human-made objects used to represent the world of suffering, the Buddha described the practices leading to the end of suffering with natural analogies and processes. The Buddhist word often translated as “practice” is bhavana, meaning “growth” and “cultivation,” words associated with farmers tending their plants and trees. To practice the Dharma is to cultivate our potential to grow spiritually, as farmers do with plants. Just as seeds sprout and plants grow, increase, and come to fullness in dependence on the earth, so wholesome states grow, increase, and come to fullness in dependence on cultivating the Noble Eightfold Path. Protecting the growth of what is wholesome within us is likened to supporting the growth of a tree by protecting it from being overgrown by vines.

An evocative natural metaphor associated with Buddhist practice is the womb (yoni in Buddha’s language). Just as human life grows naturally in a mother’s womb, the Buddha’s “contemplation from the womb” (yoniso manasikara) generated the understanding leading to his awakening. This analogy suggests that profound spiritual contemplation born from a deep source within supports our spiritual growth.

In the suttas, people approaching awakening are described as “ripe,” and experiencing realization is referred to as attaining the “fruit.”

All these natural analogies suggest that spiritual practice involves natural growth, which we support, nourish, and protect. It is not something we construct, engineer, or force. Instead of being concerned with what Buddhist practice we should do, it might be more helpful to consider what wholesome inner qualities we want to foster and how to create the conditions for them to develop. The Buddha said that living ethically gives rise to gladness, gladness gives birth to joy, joy calms the body, with a calm body one feels happy, and happiness concentrates the mind. In this description becoming concentrated is not something a practitioner does; rather, it arises from a natural growth nourished by a series of pre-existing wholesome states.

In one of his teachings, the Buddha describes spiritual growth as being so in conformity with what is natural (dhammata) that one does not need to actively think or have wishes about growing. If one is ethical, it is natural for non-regret to appear. With non-regret, gladness arises. In this teaching, the process does not end with concentration, but continues all the way to liberation. This does not imply that a practitioner does not have a role in their spiritual development. Rather, a practitioner provides the supporting conditions, the primary one being a clear, undistracted awareness which functions like sunlight providing an essential condition for plants to grow.

One aspect of what we might call this natural human operating system (as opposed to the artificial or synthetic one) is that it involves the natural shedding of all that brings us debilitating suffering. As we grow, we shed these things, just as a snake sheds its old skin. As the wholesome natural system grows, delusions, attachments, and obsessions fall away. This natural shedding process, which might be likened to children leaving behind fairy tales as they mature, brings liberation and freedom in the course of the practitioner’s journey.

The essence of Buddhist practice is twofold. First is to support the natural growth of our inherent potential to move toward awakening. Second is to allow for the shedding, letting go, and disappearance of everything that is not natural, and which is an unfortunate byproduct of the human capacity to construct stories, imagine things that are not real, and generate unlimited desires leading to suffering. Buddhist practice, at heart, is learning to live the natural processes that lead to the end of suffering.