Homelessness is Nibbana

by Sister Medhini

1. There are a range of different views and positions on the question of whether one ‘must be a monk to practice the Dhamma’ or whether the Buddha’s teaching is ‘only for monks’ or not. Regardless of the particular stance, however, all seem to overlook the basic reason and context for one going forth that is explicitly described in the suttas – not only once or twice, but countless times.  Here is one instance:

 Formerly, friends, when living as a householder, I was without wisdom. Then the Tathagata, or his disciple, taught me the dhamma. On hearing that dhamma, I acquired faith in the Tathagata. With that faith, I reflected: “The household life is confined, a dusty path; going forth is open air. It is not easy, while settled at home, to lead this holy life, utterly perfect and entirely pure as a polished conch-shell. Why don’t I shave off my hair and beard, put on the ochre robes, and go forth from home into homelessness?

MN 112

The main point of this passage, which seems to be quite easily missed, is the fact that seeing the household life as a claustrophobic and polluted atmosphere, where it is ‘not easy to lead the holy life,’ is far from being a personal whim that happens to occur to some people and not others. It is the immediate and natural consequence of hearing the dhamma, gaining faith in it, and reflecting on one’s situation through that faith. And so if somebody is very committed to practicing the dhamma yet at the same time sees no problem or contradiction with living at home while doing so, then it is very likely because their idea of both the practice and the goal is quite different from what the monk in the above passage is referring to.1

2. The nature of the goal is described as follows, in again a very familiar passage that occurs repeatedly:

This is peaceful, this is sublime, that is: the stilling of all activities, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, cessation – Nibbāna.

AN 11.7

Household life, on the other hand, refers to the life that is bound up with acquisitions and the constant activity of acquiring, maintaining and protecting them. Similarly, a ‘home’ is basically a comfort zone; a situation that you regard as yours to manage according to your preference and where you have a sense of control and familiarity.                                                                             

As such, the total and unconditional abandonment of household life should not be seen as something one may or may not have to do in order to then go on to practice and attain Nibbāna. – it is Nibbāna.  

That is why there can be no attainment of arahantship as a layperson, any more than there can be the relinquishment of all acquisition without relinquishing any acquisitions. A layman becomes an arahant precisely in virtue of giving up everything that makes him a layman. Along the same lines, only an arahant is incapable of returning to the household life2, and strictly speaking, only he is said to be truly worthy of the designation ‘bhikkhu’ or ‘renunciate’.

He for whom in all name and form

There is no sense of ownership

Who does not sorrow from what is not –

He is called a ‘bhikkhu.’

Dhp 367                                                                  

If this is not understood, it is quite natural for someone to ‘go forth’ as a monk only to seek new comfort zones and different ways to feel at home, so that in spite of wearing robes and adhering to rules, he is still very much a householder in the way that matters. Some degree of this is unavoidable: giving up any major worldly home will inevitably be done on the basis of leaning on a subtler one initially. This in itself is not a problem, as long as you are careful not to allow yourself to feel fully justified in doing so, or think that becoming a monk will do the work of relinquishment for you.      
  
3. What all this implies is that practicing homelessness rightly does not actually start with ordaining as a monk, but with learning and gaining clarity and faith in regard to the harm and danger of acquisition, and the value of renunciation.

In terms of this reflection and understanding, the point that has to be very much stressed is that it is the comfort of household life that makes it ‘crowded and dusty’, much more so than all the hassle and burden that people put up with for the sake of that comfort. So, in order to place yourself at what is the very starting point of the gradual training in the suttas, you need to start thinking in a way that leads to seeing the dependency on whatever pleasures and comforts define ‘home’ for you, as confinement and dust.

What are these pleasures and comforts that constitute confinement? Although there are as many varieties of comfort zones as individuals3, sensuality – that is to say, pleasures and attractions dependent on sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches – is the primordial comfort zone for anyone born human. Everything in household life aims at and circles around it, and, for one with faith in the dhamma reflecting rightly through that faith, it is this that is invariably seen as a baited trap.                                

4. This type of reflection is the only way to abandon these fundamental ties of the household life, which can only be fully relinquished on the level of the internal safety and delight in them (as opposed to somehow getting rid of, or becoming unpercepient of all agreeable sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches). The same in fact applies to giving up anything to which you are attached, even specific objects that you can choose to give away or physically remove yourself from. Being physically removed from something does not equate to giving it up – if it did, losing something dear would not entail suffering. The suffering of loss is not because of the absence of something, but because it is not given up. Equally, the pain of loss always fades sooner or later, without implying that there is any less internal attachment, which has just shifted from one thing to another, delighting here instead of there.

This should on no account be taken to mean that there is no need for physical separation from sensuality. What it does imply is that the degree of physical separation that is needed is no more and no less than what is outlined by the eight precepts, and that even this physical separation is, though necessary, not in itself a sufficient condition for relinquishing acquisition on the level that would free you4.                                

The way of life of a monk, having gone forth, is the lifestyle that is shaped by the decision to live physically separate from engagement with the pleasures and concerns of the world. One should not be keeping this or that precept because of being a monk; rather, it is primarily the choice to not live in accordance with preference and comfort that makes somebody a monk. This way of living is what the precepts outline, and what the livelihood of a bhikkhu is meant to support.            

5. “The world is unstable and swept away.

The world is shelterless and without a protector.

The world is without what is one’s own, one must go on having left all behind.  

The world is incomplete, insatiate, the slave of craving.

“Great king, these are the four summaries of the Dhamma that have been taught by the Blessed One who knows and sees, accomplished and fully enlightened. Knowing and seeing and hearing them, I went forth from the home life into homelessness.”

MN  82

To contemplate and start seeing the confining nature of household life is not a very complex or intellectually taxing thing; but it is likely to be uneasy, especially if a person’s starting point is undeveloped in virtue and honesty. Most people who have the aim of practicing the dhamma begin with at least a grain of the correct recognition, which is not about finding out something new, but rather admitting to yourself certain very obvious things that everyone already knows, but habitually distracts themselves from.

How do you know that anything is a comfort zone for you to begin with, even the most trivial? The only way to find a comfort zone is through the presence of potential anxiety at its periphery, where there is the possibility of its being threatened or being forced to step outside it. Every comfort zone is inherently unstable, and involves a corresponding pressure and compulsion to do things for the sake of remaining within it. The less you turn a blind eye to these – again, quite obvious – aspects of that which is your home, the less you will be able to feel at home in it, whether or not you are aiming to go from home to homelessness.

This does not mean that you must be incessantly plagued with existential anxiety and dread, such that if ever you happen to feel pleasant or neutral, it means you must be doing something wrong. It means only that if you are actively seeking to avoid whatever anxiety and dread does arise here – that would indeed be doing something wrong. That is why this reflection necessarily goes hand in hand with refraining from acting in ways that support the distraction from it, and fuel the intoxication with it; namely those actions motivated by greed, by aversion or by careless indolence and distraction. It is impossible to act out in these ways while maintaining the perspective outlined above, and even if the acting out is not very frequent, it will still impede any real clarity from developing in this regard. On the other hand, even if you do not try to deliberately contemplate the nature of household life, simply refusing to give in to actions that you know are unwholesome will unfailingly expose whatever you are taking as a comfort zone, and undermine it at the same time.  

6. Supposing you are recognising the instability of your home life, and are able to bear the whatever degree of unease this might engender without immediately resorting to covering it up. What do you do next?                                                                                                  

The almost inevitable tendency here is to treat the ‘practice of dhamma’ as something else that comes ‘after’ this – as an answer to it, that ends up being done at the expense of it. This is very natural, because that recognition is universally the direction in which nobody wants to look and everyone wants to escape. But it is also exactly where the practice not only begins, but how it progresses and where it ends. So the answer to the question of what to do next is, in the broadest terms, ‘not forget about it.’  

7. The one of broad wisdom has indeed found

The opening amidst confinement,

The Buddha who discovered jhāna,

The withdrawn chief bull, the sage.”

“Even amidst confinement they find it,

The Dhamma for the attainment of Nibbāna—

Those who have acquired mindfulness,

Those perfectly well composed.

 SN 2.7

The words ‘confinement’ and ‘opening’ translate ‘sambādha’ and ‘okāsa’, which are the same words that appear in the standard description quoted above of a householder deciding to go forth. This is not incidental, as should be obvious at this point. As noted above, leaving home to become a monk is not in itself the escape from the confinement of household life. Leaving the worldly home is, rather, done for the sake of uncovering and bringing to light the more fundamental situation that all who live are taking as ‘home’ by default; namely this living body and the mind it is paired with.  

8. Every instruction that was given to monks by the Buddha is for the sake of maintaining awareness and perspective in regard to the extent and nature of this ‘comfort zone’ of one’s own body and senses; deactivating the activities that fuel one’s dependence on it, and composing the mind within it. But it’s important to realise that training on this level is only applicable when you are already able to not rely on coarser and more specific comfort zones, whether those pertaining to the world or to the life of a monk5. There is a reason why every description of the practice of recollectedness (satipaṭṭhāna) states that it is done on the basis of ‘dispelling longing and sorrowing in regard to the world.’

If this is not sufficiently developed, then it will almost certainly be quite hard to see how, say, recollection of breathing would pertain to or come under the same line of thinking in regard to comfort zones and their instability that I have been outlining as the foundation of the entire training. For this reason, if a person puts the cart before the horse, and tries to use the practices addressed to someone who has given up lay life as a shortcut to bypass the awkward work of abandoning lay life themselves, they will not only misunderstand and misrepresent those practices, but in doing so will lose sight of whatever thread of right reflection they might have otherwise been developing6

This does not mean that ‘only monks can practice mindfulness of breathing’. What it does mean is that you need to be seeing household life as crowded and dusty and acting in accordance with this recognition; not forgetting about it, not acting out of the habitual pressure and anxiety that inevitably arises without the usual distractions from it, training yourself to relinquish it – and only then would mindfulness of the body and of breathing naturally make sense in a way that does not at all compromise the extent of ‘homelessness’ that you have already developed. Recollection of breathing is nothing but the direct way to undermine any sense of having a home within your own body, and what makes it impossible to depend on anything in the world that requires the body to be there beforehand – that is to say, anything in the world.

9. As was already briefly mentioned above: when it comes to your own home and situation that you generally take for granted, the less you turn a blind eye to the uncertain and unstable aspects of it that are generally left out of the picture, the less you will be able to carelessly regard it as your own, or to feel really ‘at home’ in it.

Initially this is bound to feel uneasy. That is why it is called ‘confinement,’ and that is why you need to develop the ability to withstand whatever anxiety arises on account of that recognition. But it is important to emphasise that it is not this instability or homelessness-amidst-home that is painful, but only the desire and attachment that you are unknowingly activating in regard to it. This is what is uncovered through restraint and the correct lines of reflection.

So the practice is not to just grit your teeth and withstand the pain waiting for the ‘opening’ to suddenly reveal itself out of nowhere and release you. It is to learn to discern this layer of active involvement and stop fuelling it. The same homelessness amidst-that-which-was-home, which is what dukkha is from the point of view of desire and attachment to it, is Nibbana when that desire and attachment is fully relinquished.                                                                                                                              

There are, bhikkhus, these three kinds of intoxication. What three? Intoxication with youth, intoxication with health, and intoxication with life. An uninstructed worldling, intoxicated with youth, engages in misconduct by body, speech, and mind. With the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell. An uninstructed worldling, intoxicated with health, engages in misconduct by body, speech, and mind. With the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell. An uninstructed worldling, intoxicated with life, engages in misconduct by body, speech, and mind. With the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell.

Intoxicated with youth, a bhikkhu gives up the training and reverts to the lower life; or intoxicated with health, he gives up the training and reverts to the lower life; or intoxicated with life, he gives up the training and reverts to the lower life.

“Worldlings subject to illness,

old age, and death, are disgusted

[by other people] who exist

in accordance with their nature.

“If I were to become disgusted

with beings who have such a nature,

that would not be proper for me

since I too have the same nature.

While I was dwelling thus,

having known the state without acquisitions,

I overcame all intoxications—

intoxication with health,

with youth, and with life—

having seen security in renunciation.

“Zeal then arose in me

as I clearly saw nibbāna.

Now I am incapable

of indulging in sensual pleasures.

Relying on the spiritual life,

never will I turn back.”

AN 3.37

  1. There are of course many accounts of laypeople who heard the dhamma, gained faith and still chose not to become monks or were not able to; but what the above passage makes very clear is that their choice of living as a householder could only be made in spite of their faith, not because of it. To whatever degree they were to have reflected on the faith and the understanding of the dhamma they had gained, they too would have been seeing their environment filled with belongings and attachments as confining, dusty, entrapping and unsafe. And it is precisely this way of regarding it that would have been the basis for whatever degree of progress they made within their environment of household life. ↩︎
  2. See AN 9.7 and 9.8 ↩︎
  3. A comfort zone need not even necessarily be physically ‘comfortable’ in order to qualify as such. For example, a stereotypical home is a well-furnished dwelling where one stays all the time, but equally, constantly moving from one situation to another without committing to anything can be a comfort zone for some. Company is a comfort zone for those who fear loneliness, but solitude can be a comfort zone for those who are insecure and anxious around others. Activity is a comfort zone for the restless, and inactivity is a comfort zone for the lazy. For someone set on doing everything their own way, being told what to do and having to obey an authority is uncomfortable, while for someone who takes comfort in rules and duties, questioning the rules and thinking for themselves is equally frightening. Wherever there is the pressure of greed, aversion and distraction, there is a comfort zone. ↩︎
  4. Those who seek to justify non-abandonment of the world, sometimes not even keeping the precepts, often resort to the point that ultimately a person’s external surroundings and possessions make no difference as long as they are detached. But the very fact that this is invariably used to justify not giving things up, rather than the alternative, is evidence that it does indeed make a difference. If it were to truly make no difference to you, you would have no problem with giving things up, and thus no reason to justify not doing so. Obviously, certain things cannot be given up without risk to life or health; food being the obvious example, which is why the instruction is to engage with it only for that reason.  
    Furthermore, there are certain physical behaviours that are simply not possible to do without mental attachment involved (sexuality, killing, lying, stealing, deliberate self-intoxication), and therefore to suggest that one could give up the mental attachment without giving up these physical behaviours is literally like saying you could dry and season a tree branch while having it produce and ripen fruit at the same time. (See MN 22). ↩︎
  5. Which is exactly why such practices are always addressed to monks in the suttas, never to laypeople. And even monks are often specifically told to develop virtue and restraint before practicing mindfulness of the body. (See SN 47.3) ↩︎
  6. This point is evidenced by the wide variety of current misrepresentations of such instructions, which reduce them to something that not only does not intrinsically require the reflections described above as a necessary basis, but is actually prohibitive of it. It is simply not possible to recollect the fact of living within something that is a comfort zone for you, together with all the uneasy possibilities and risks that this implies in the background of it, while intently focusing on following sensations of breathing in one’s body, for example; or trying to not think about anything at all and just let each and every thought drift past. ↩︎