By Sister Medhini
“It occurred to me, Prince: ‘Whenever ascetics or brahmins of the past felt harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, the utmost was this; there is no more than this. And whenever ascetics or brahmins of the future will feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, the utmost will be this; there is no more than this. And whatever ascetics or brahmins now feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, the utmost is this; there is no more than this. And yet, through the practice of these severe austerities, I have not achieved anything beyond the mundane – any knowledge and vision worthy of a noble one. Could there be another path to awakening?’
“Then, Prince, three similes came to me, not learned before, not heard before.
“Suppose there were a wet piece of wood, full of sap and lying in the water. And a man were to come along taking an upper fire-stick – ‘I will start a fire; I will generate heat.’
What do you think, Prince: would that man, having taken the upper fire-stick and rubbing it on the wet piece of wood, full of sap and lying in the water, be able to start a fire and generate heat?”“No indeed, Bhante. Why is that? Because the piece of wood is wet and full of sap, and moreover it is lying in the water; that man would be heir to only weariness and frustration.”
“Just in this way, Prince, whatever ascetics and brahmins do not live withdrawn from sensuality in body, and in whom desire for sensuality, love for sensuality, preoccupation with sensuality, thirst for sensuality, and zeal for sensuality are internally not well abandoned and thoroughly calmed: even if those good ascetics and brahmins feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are incapable of knowledge, vision, and unsurpassed enlightenment; and even if they do not feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are incapable of knowledge, vision, and unsurpassed enlightenment.
“That was the first simile that came to me, not learned before, not heard before.
“Furthermore, Prince, a second simile came to me, not learned before, not heard before: Suppose there were a wet piece of wood, full of sap and lying on the ground far from water. And a man were to come along, taking an upper fire-stick – ‘I will start a fire; I will generate heat.’
What do you think, Prince: would that man, having taken the upper fire-stick and rubbing it on the wet piece of wood, full of sap and lying on the ground far from water, be able to start a fire and generate heat?”“No indeed, Bhante. Why is that? Because however far it may be lying from the water, that piece of wood is still wet and full of sap; that man would be heir to only weariness and frustration.”
“Just in this way, Prince, whatever ascetics and brahmins live withdrawn from sensuality in body, yet in whom desire for sensuality, love for sensuality, preoccupation with sensuality, thirst for sensuality, and zeal for sensuality are internally not well abandoned and thoroughly calmed: even if those good ascetics and brahmins feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are incapable of knowledge, vision, and unsurpassed enlightenment; and even if they do not feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are incapable of knowledge, vision, and unsurpassed enlightenment.
“That was the second simile that came to me, not learned before, not heard before.
“Furthermore, Prince, a third simile came to me, not learned before, not heard before: Suppose there were a dry and sapless piece of wood, lying on the ground far from water. And a man were to come along taking an upper fire-stick – ‘I will start a fire; I will generate heat.’ What do you think, Prince: would that man, having taken the upper fire-stick and rubbing it on the dry, sapless piece of wood, lying on the ground far from water, be able to start a fire and generate heat?”
“Yes, Bhante. Why is that? Because the piece of wood is dry and sapless, and moreover it is lying on the ground far from water.”
“Just in this way, Prince, whatever ascetics and brahmins live withdrawn from sensuality in body, and in whom desire for sensuality, love for sensuality, preoccupation with sensuality, thirst for sensuality, and zeal for sensuality is internally well abandoned and thoroughly calmed: even if those good ascetics and brahmins feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are capable of knowledge, vision, and ultimate enlightenment; and even if they do not feel harsh, severe, piercing, and painful feelings through their own exertion, they are capable of knowledge, vision, and ultimate enlightenment.
“That was the third simile that came to me, not learned before, not heard before.
“It occurred to me, Prince: ‘I remember sitting in the shade of a rose-apple tree, while my father the Sakyan was busy, and withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unwholesome things, with thinking and pondering, and with joy and happiness born of seclusion, I dwelled having established myself in the first meditation. Could that be the path to awakening?’1
And following that memory, I had the recognition: ‘That is the path to awakening!’
I thought: ‘Now why am I afraid of that pleasure which is entirely apart from the pleasure of sensuality, apart from unwholesome things?’ I thought: ‘I am no longer afraid of that pleasure, which is entirely apart from the pleasure of sensuality and apart from unwholesome things.’”
– MN 36
In the Pāli versions of MN 85 and MN 36, the simile of the wet sticks occurs before the Bodhisatta began his extreme ascetic practices. In the Sanskrit parallel of this account in the Saṅghabhedavastu, it occurs after he had already undergone them. Not only does this make far more sense in the narrative of the sutta as a whole – the full weight and significance of the simile only appears when considered in this particular context, and this has some very real practical implications.
I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not interested in debating which of these texts or traditions is earlier or more authoritative. This is not a textual or historical issue; it is a practical one regarding what exactly constitutes the path to freedom from suffering, and how that path can be realised. The Sanskrit parallel provides a starting point for thinking about this, but all that follows would hold true even if there were no parallel.
The meaning of the simile is very clear and straightforward. Its purpose is, firstly, to illustrate that it is impossible to arrive at clarity of understanding or knowledge of truth without being thoroughly withdrawn from sensuality, and without having calmed the desire internally for sensuality. Secondly, it is to show that going beyond this in creating self-inflicted pain for its own sake is redundant and has no benefit. Every section of the simile repeats that the dryness of the sticks is the factor that determines the capacity for awakening, and self-mortification makes no difference.
A further implication that can be gathered from this is that engaging in a practice of self-mortification towards the goal of awakening would not only be useless, but would in its own way constitute an obstacle. This is because doing so would necessarily come through the view, or at least the hope, that this activity, as opposed to merely withdrawing from sensual actions, words, thoughts, and inclinations, could somehow contribute to higher knowledge and understanding.
This would imply a failure to understand the principle that the simile of the wet sticks illustrates: that knowledge and vision is obscured by one’s own wilful engagement in sense desires, and one’s own emotional stickiness in regard to that state of sensual existence. Whatever the extent of that stickiness and dependence on sense pleasures that a given individual starts with, is not there because of failing to put himself through arbitrary forms of self-inflicted discomfort. It is there because he is actively maintaining it through choices and actions by body, speech and mind. Although the process of withdrawal from this engagement will also inevitably be uncomfortable for one who has been dependent on it, there is all the difference in the world between pain of withdrawal from dependency, and pain upon which one becomes dependent as a means of purification. It is the latter that is totally without benefit.
It is quite implausible that having thought along these lines, the Bodhisatta would then go on to engage in self-mortification practices regardless.
Even more importantly, the weight and significance of the similes increases in the context of their occurring as a consequence of the Bodhisatta’s recognition of the total futility of the ascetic practices he had been engaging in. To understand this point, it is necessary to think in some depth about the significance of such recognition and what is required to arrive at it.
It might be imagined that anyone who were to spend long enough engaging in some practice that is clearly not leading to the goal it is supposed to, would eventually arrive at the same conclusion that the Bodhisatta did in this situation. The reality, however, is almost the exact opposite. Investment in any practice towards liberation, no matter how painful from an external standpoint, gathers its own momentum and internally becomes a place of safety in itself. As such, it becomes exceedingly difficult to relinquish, even for one who might be well aware that he has not reached his intended aim.
For a person in such a position, the natural implication of giving up what they have been doing, and admitting that all of this was for nothing, is that the goal they were striving for is also to be given up. In other words, giving up something that has become identified with “practice towards enlightenment”, effectively means “returning to sensuality.” It is impossible to entirely relinquish the extreme of self-mortification and just happen to stay there by circumstance, without falling back into the other extreme – for the simple reason that to do so requires one to remain entirely confined within the resulting doubt, lack of resolution, sense of failure and untetheredness, and not latch onto something else to fill that void. Even if there is someone (such as a Buddha) to tell you that this is in fact where you should stay, in spite of it feeling like the most unnatural and wrong thing to do, following that instruction requires significant authenticity and strength of mind. Without any such indication of a word of another, the fact that someone nonetheless does so to a sufficient degree and for a sufficient time for wisdom to arise through it, is what makes the arising of a Buddha miraculous.
It is in this context that the simile of the wet sticks arises and carries even more weight, as precipitated by the reflection: “I have not, through the practice of these severe austerities, achieved anything beyond the mundane, knowledge and vision worthy of a noble one. Could there be another path to awakening?”
It is very important to note that the similes (unlike the memory of jhāna which follows the line in the Pāli sutta) do not immediately or directly answer this somewhat desperate question “could there be another path to awakening?” – the core of which is the even more universal dilemma that can be simply expressed as: “What on earth do I do?”
What the similes do reflect, in this context, is the recognition that
1) Regardless of what might or might not constitute the path to awakening, and even if there were to be no path at all to be found, returning to sensuality would be a separate action that carries no benefit and only harm.
2) Regardless of what exactly constitutes the specific path to awakening, sensuality by definition can only hinder it. As long as there is mental delight in sensuality (let alone actions, words and thoughts based on that delight), there cannot be knowledge, vision and clarity of insight any more than there can be fire and water in the same place at the same time.
3) The further confirmation that not only were these particular self-mortification practices futile; in its very nature self-mortification makes no difference towards the goal.
In short, the significance of the similes is that although one might still not know “what to do,” it can still be clear what not to do: everything else is secondary to the dryness of the sticks, which is only accomplished by actually disengaging from sensual desires both physically and mentally.
It is at this point that it would make very natural sense for the Bodhisatta to recall a time in which his mind had already been thoroughly and entirely turned away from desire and sensuality, and to realise that this, in fact, is the path to awakening.
In other words, the most significant insight that this sutta describes is not actually that jhāna, even understood as this state of complete seclusion from desires, is the path to awakening in itself. (If abiding in jhāna alone were fully sufficient for awakening, the Bodhisatta’s earlier experience of it should have resulted in him becoming the Buddha there and then.) The point, which is subtle and all too easily overlooked, is in the understanding of the value of withdrawal from desire, for its own sake.
This is also what distinguishes jhāna from the attainments the Buddha had already achieved under the ascetics Āḷāra Kalāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta. The establishment of mind in the dimension of nothingness, or the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, most certainly also entails thorough withdrawal from sensuality; because in order to be established upon such a phenomenon, everything below, inferior or more particular than that phenomenon needs to be overcome. This includes sense pleasures of any kind. The difference in this case, however, is that although the same work to abandon sense pleasures is being done2, it is done in virtue of looking towards and resting on a higher thing, with the emphasis on that. Although the mind’s elevation above such desires will indeed entail genuine peace, such a person will inevitably regard the peace they experience as being rooted in that dimension, because of its elevation or loftiness. So, one who has abandoned sense pleasures on account of something else, will not be able to rightly recognise the benefit of withdrawal from that extent of desire in and of itself. Nevertheless, the factual dispassion for sensuality and development of composure that would be required to abide in these dimensions, is the very reason that these teachers were later said to have “little dust in their eyes”.
In the same way, although the earlier dwelling in jhāna that the Buddha recollected did not result in awakening at the time, later after giving up his practice of self-mortification he was able to realise: “This is the path to awakening!”
The difference here is not in some “extra step” (which the sutta nowhere mentions) – it is the understanding of where the value of it is.
So, although the order and placement of the simile of the sticks and the memory of the first jhāna are comparatively minor details, their significance and implications are not; both for how we understand the work undergone by the Buddha, and, by extension, how we understand our own work toward the same goal.
Whatever might be the reason for the position of the simile in the Pāli, the result is that it can be quite easily overlooked and regarded as almost incidental – not significantly influencing the Bodhisatta’s own actions before or after; certainly not the defining factor in opening the middle way. Instead, the seemingly fortuitous and circumstantial arising of a past memory of jhāna is what appears to have truly revealed the path to enlightenment. One who sees his own task in the same light can all too easily allow himself to regard the abandonment of sensuality itself as similarly incidental – despite the simile itself directly contradicting this – while expecting the true breakthrough to arise through something that simply happens to occur (perhaps after sufficient time spent engaging in some equally arbitrary practice).
But the simile of the wet sticks is the opposite of incidental. It reflects the very recognition of where the path to awakening is, and WHY it must be so. As the simile itself directly says, knowledge and vision depends on thorough disengagement from sensual desires. And the value of that disengagement is not something that can be understood by means of engagement and dependence, whether on pleasure or pain. It can only become apparent when all such options of engagement have been closed off and abandoned. In the Bodhisatta’s case, this could only come about through the sheer exhaustion of all those options, and the refusal to totally forgo the goal of peace in spite of that exhaustion. If someone today wants to pursue the same goal, the principle is the same; but renunciation and disengagement can be directly trained, without wasting time in other pointless avenues. This is what the gradual training of the suttas describes.
- In spite of traditional accounts, there is no indication that the Buddha was a child at this time. In the Saṅghabhedavastu (Vol. I, pp. 76–77), the account is that the Bodhisatta had been sent to oversee some farm work by his father, and was struck with dread and sense of urgency on seeing the affliction of the people and animals at work. It was with this same sense of urgency that he then sat down under the rose-apple tree, his mind turned away from sensuality. ↩︎
- Note well that what is described here is very different from simply replacing one’s usual sensual desires with something else, as can quite commonly be done through various forms of religious practice: by replacing worldly pleasures with love of God, meditative calm, or some equivalent. In such cases sensuality is not really being given up at all – the very same desire is merely being directed elsewhere and obscured, not tamed. And so if, for whatever reason, one were to lose one’s faith in God (or otherwise lose that which has been standing in place of sensuality), those same sensual pleasures and desires would be right there waiting, and one could very well still go back to them. ↩︎