The Five Finest Walls

5.1 The Five Finest Walls

Five walls remain, and they have names: craving for form, craving for the formless, conceit, restlessness, ignorance.

Anyone who has read the four stations before this will notice that the canon's tone changes here. The earlier fetters wore the marks of "coarse," "hot," "vexing"—sensual craving and ill will burn visibly, and anyone can point at them and call them a fault. These five have no coarse aspect. Craving for form and the formless craves not gross pleasure but the subtle bliss of meditative absorption. Conceit grasps not a visible arrogance but the last thread of "I." Restlessness stirs not as gross distraction but as the final unstilled tremor of a mind at utmost quiet. Ignorance deludes at the bottom layer of all knowing, and never once shows itself on the surface.

Look first at the treasury's naming of the five:

The fetters favoring the higher portion are likewise five: the two cravings, for form and the formless, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance—because they prevent rising beyond the higher … Because they augment the higher realms, they are named the fetters favoring the higher portion.

The fetters of the higher portion—fetters that augment the higher realms and keep a being from rising beyond them. Set the symmetry out and it is plain: the five lower fetters bind to the desire realm, preventing escape from desire; the five higher bind to the upper two realms—form and formless—preventing escape upward. The higher the realm bound to, the quieter and subtler what is faced, the finer the fetter. Why these five are the hardest of the ten: half the answer is already here—the difficulty is not their strength but their depth of hiding.

Hard Because Hidden, Not Because Heavy

Say this layer through. The desire realm's greed and anger wear their faults on their face—suffering is present, and one knows it for sickness. The upper realms' craving for absorption hides its fault inside bliss: the deeper the absorption, the subtler the pleasure, the finer the clinging—so fine it looks like attainment, looks like "good." The person at ease in the four absorptions and the formless states finds nothing harder to see than his own craving for that very ease.

Conceit, restlessness, ignorance hide the same way. Conceit's last shadow hides in the fine thought "I have reached this far." Restlessness's unstilled remainder hides in a stirring too faint to notice within utmost quiet. Ignorance's root lies under the floor of all seeing and hearing and knowing, and never once steps forward.

So the difficulty of these five is the difficulty of the self-concealing. Like wiping a mirror: coarse grime is easily seen and easily wiped; the last thin film is the hardest to notice and the hardest to clear. Or like peeling an onion: the outer coarse skins tear away at a touch; the deeper one goes, the thinner the layers, and the thinner, the harder to take hold of. The four earlier stations peeled the outer layers—the desire realm's fevers, coarse and visible. This station faces the innermost few: thin enough to grow flush against the mind, thin enough not to look like skin at all.

The difficulty has risen the whole way—but see clearly what has risen: not force, but hiddenness. It is not that these five are fiercer than sensual craving—it is that the coarse is finished, and what remains is only the fine fetters withdrawn to the most hidden place.

Each the Last Residue of Its Kind

Look at the five from another side and their fineness grows plainer still: each is the final residue of one kind of grasping.

Craving for form and the formless—the residue of craving. Gross craving was exhausted at the non-returner's station; the craving that remains craves the most tranquil of pleasures, and so looks least like craving. Conceit—the last shadow of "I." Identity-view, the coarse self-view, fell at the first fruit; but the grasping of "I" does not necessarily die with the coarse view, and a fine conceit remains, most often wearing the face of "I have attained." Restlessness—the unfinished portion of stillness. Coarse distraction was subdued long ago; what remains is the last faint motion a mind keeps even at its quietest. Ignorance—the root. It is not one fetter ranked beside the other four; it is the root on which all fetters stand. The nine before it are its branches. While the root stands, branches can grow again; therefore it is severed last.

Set the five in a row: the embers of craving, the shadow of self, the last thread of motion, the old root of delusion. To sever them is the final stroke that pulls each family of defilement up by the root. "Finest" means exactly this: they are embers, shadows, threads, and root—not the wall's thickness, but the wall's concealment.

What Severs Them Is the Perception of Impermanence

The finest fetters need the finest antidote. The coarse antidotes lose their purchase here—contemplating the unattractive can treat sensual craving, but not the fine craving for the bliss of absorption; the most hidden grasping must be met by a wisdom that reaches the very bottom. What the sutta gives is the perception of impermanence.

The Saṃyukta-āgama records: the Buddha, dwelling at Sāvatthī in Jeta's Grove, addressed the monks:

The perception of impermanence, cultivated and much cultivated, can sever all craving for sensuality, craving for form, craving for the formless, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance.

Look at the list of what it severs: craving for form, craving for the formless, restlessness, conceit, ignorance—the fetters of the higher realms, taken in one cast. And the manner of that sitting is a cascade of similes—eight of them, the very first driving straight at the root:

It is like a farmer who, at summer's end and autumn's beginning, plows his field deep, turning up the rootstock and breaking the grass.

Deep-plowed at the turn of the seasons—the grass turned up by the roots. The second simile: like a reaper who grips the grass by its ends, lifts and shakes it, and the withered falls away entire. The third: like a mango tree when a strong wind shakes its boughs, and the fruit all falls. Three similes, one handiwork: do not trim branches; move the root—the root moved, the branches fall of themselves. Then the remaining five similes turn the other way, and speak of the impermanence-perception's standing among all contemplations: like the central pillar of a tower, firm, on which all the timbers depend; like the elephant's footprint, largest of all prints, containing the rest; like all rivers running to the sea; like the rising sun dispelling the world's dark; like the wheel-turning king, highest and most excellent among lesser kings. Able to reach the root, and supreme among perceptions: that is the wisdom that meets the five finest fetters.

Whence such power? Look at the five fetters' common root-sickness: the one who craves absorption finely takes its bliss for a lasting happiness that can be held; the one who carries conceit finely takes a lasting "I" as something to stand proud on; ignorance simply fails to see impermanence at all, and holds to permanence. Five fetters, one root—the grasping of permanence. The perception of impermanence shines straight on "all is impermanent"—the deepest bliss of absorption not excepted, "I" not excepted—shines on the root; and the root once shaken, all five sway. And this mechanism need not be reconstructed on the sutta's behalf; the sitting's closing passage says it itself. How is it cultivated? On open ground or among the trees, attending rightly: form is impermanent; feeling, perception, formations, consciousness are impermanent. And why does that sever?

The perception of impermanence can establish the perception of no-self; the noble disciple who dwells in the perception of no-self has a mind free of the conceit "I am," and turns smoothly toward nibbāna.

Impermanence-perception raises no-self-perception; dwelling in no-self, the mind leaves the conceit "I am"; leaving conceit, one turns with the current toward nibbāna. Four steps, each begetting the next—and what loosens last is exactly the shadow of "I": conceit. The roll called on Part Three's uposatha night ends by counting the assembly's practices, and there the same medicine is already on the list: contemplating the unattractive to sever sensual craving, cultivating kindness to sever ill will, cultivating the perception of impermanence to sever the conceit "I am"—the prescription was written on that night's roster all along.

One boundary to set down in passing. "The five higher fetters," as a collected term, comes from the treasury; the āgamas have the five's content—the impermanence-perception discourse lists their very names, only joined with sensual craving as six, never gathered into the five-fold term. The term belongs to the treatise; the content stands in the sutta. This book uses the term after the treasury's usage, and records the boundary here.

Three Things to See Clearly Here

First, "hardest to sever" does not mean "heaviest." The source of the difficulty is hiddenness, not force—the coarse, in fact, was finished at the earlier fruits. Get this backwards and the work goes wrong at the source: thinking it must be fiercer, when it must be finer.

Second, the true work of this station is not to crave at the point of greatest bliss. The deeper the absorption, the more it resembles attainment—and that is exactly where craving for form and the formless makes its home. Do not take the upper realms' bliss for the end and cling to it; only one who can see, within the deepest bliss, its impermanence and its unworthiness of grasping, touches these five fetters at all.

Third, this chapter has said what is to be torn down. What stands revealed when these five walls are down—the content of that freedom—this book does not say, and ought not: that is the twin volume's office. This book's portion runs only to how the tearing is done, and how far.

The Last Cut Ahead

The five walls stand identified: where they hide, where their root lies, what wisdom moves them. What remains is to bring this finest of blades down on the final grade.

The instant that cut settles has a name—one whose sentences this book has been quoting since its first chapter without ever walking up to it directly: the exhaustion of the taints. The next chapter walks up to it. It is the last chapter of this book.