Standing Outside of the Mandala
A couple of decades ago, I was in the habit of explaining my approach to meditation to other meditation teachers in the hope that they would understand what I was doing. The most common reply I got was, “Everything is inside the mandala.” They seemed to be saying, “Your approach to meditation fits under the Buddha’s umbrella of acceptable practices, just like everything we teach.” My mind went to: My approach to meditation is the mandala at its outer circle, not just a tiny section within the square inside the circle! But Buddhist teachers, myself included, have the tendency to put “rival” teachings into boxes that fit inside the mandala, while they stand outside of it. Apparently, that did not come from nowhere. It was also the Buddha’s preferred positioning of the Dhamma.
When the Buddha gave His discourse on “Brahma’s Net of Views,” He was positioning His Dharma above Brahma’s Net. The God Brahma seems to be holding the 62 views sitting inside the net, smelling like fish, except for one eel. If Brahma is the net, the Buddha is the fisherman, the same one who could not grip the wriggling eel. He knew that the eel had to be put back into the net and subject to the same “deadening” he delivered to the other views. The Buddhists needed to “fillet” the views that threatened the authority of the Buddha’s Teaching. People could learn about the views, but only in a “flattened” form. They had to be filleted before being served up to the monks and nuns.
This probably pre-dated unagi as a freshwater eel preparation, but “Brahma’s Net of Views” certainly prepares the once wriggling eel as though it were pufferfish. Several warnings are given to the monk who may be tempted to try “eel-wriggling.” He may speak falsely, he may become attached, or he may fall victim to a skilled debater. The monk should be afraid of this happening to him if he has an appetite for the wriggling eel, who has been served up to him as a dried, chopped up, unhealthy philosophical meal.
Did you know that the Buddha’s two main disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana, who to this day stand on either side of Shakyamuni Buddha, were once-upon-a-time eel-wrigglers? They were trained in Sañjaya’s method and Sañjaya saw them as his two most promising students. Sariputta arrived at stream-entry when heard the words of the Bhikkhu Assaji: “Whatever things arise from causes, the one who has arrived at ‘That’ proclaims their cause. And their cessation too — this is what the Great Ascetic says.”
The standard take on this passage is that Sariputta was ripe to hear the teaching on causality, and from that he attained stream-entry. Sariputta and Moggallana started their journey looking for the “deathless” and they perhaps stayed too long with a teacher who would never be able to teach the way to the “deathless.” In my opinion, Sariputta was only partially persuaded by the teaching of “causality” — but what woke him up was finally finding someone to teach him the way to the “deathless.”
Sañjaya would never have claimed to have arrived at ‘That’. Nor would he say that he knew the cause of suffering and its cessation. He knew endless exploration. That was his “undying.” But, he never claimed that there is a transcendent reality beneath appearances or a “nibbana” beyond existence and non-existence. What Sañjaya taught was a method of questioning all views, ideas, assumptions, intentions, memories, feelings, and experiences. It was a method that became known for “questioning” while “not taking up a position.”
Sariputta’s stream-entry attainment can also be seen as a demonstration of how Sañjaya’s method could fit inside the Buddha’s mandala, as a preparatory practice of questioning views and exploring one’s inner experiences until the time when one is ripe to hear the Dharma. And, there is evidence pointing to Sañjaya’s method as being later suppressed under the fetter of Doubt (Vicikiccha), a word which can indicate a “restless investigation, branching out without terminating.” Sounds like eel-wriggling — Vi-chi-kich-chhaa!