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Giving the Ego a New Home - Ayatana in Buddhism · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

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  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Curious Mind
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  podcast. My name is Gabriel Ellis, I'm a
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  psychologist of psychotherapist and a Buddhist scholar.
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  And today I want to present to you the original Buddhist
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  concept of ayatana. So there is this key idea in
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  early Buddhist teachings that helps explain how we experience
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  the world, and it's called ayatana, and even though it is
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  super important, many people have not heard of it and even
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  Buddhist scholars have not understood it properly.
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  I came across it when I was working for my dissertation and
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  I basically went through all of the important key terms in early
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  Buddhist teachings and traced them back, if possible, to older
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  Indian Vedic concepts. Ayatana was one of them and so
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  today I want to explain what ayatana means and how it shapes
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  the way we think and feel. So what is Ayatana?
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  Ayatana is a word that comes from early Buddhism that means
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  something like home base or headquarters of the ego.
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  This ayatana is the place from which we normally interact with
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  the world, mostly by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
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  thinking is included in that. In the thinking is already some
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  sort of a higher sense because it includes all the others with
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  memories. So these are the basic tools we
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  use to experience normal life. That's just what it is.
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  Ayatana is now going to the kind of more core meaning of this
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  concept. It is the background or the
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  canvas of our experiences. So if the canvas is our exchange
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  with the external world, then the paint, so to speak, of this
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  canvas is exactly our sensual experience.
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  And so this ayatana is called the sensual realm or the 6th
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  sense realm, because traditionally this is how we
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  count our senses as six, including thinking in Buddhism.
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  But the canvas of our normal ayatana is not just the pure,
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  raw sensual experience, it's also about what happens next.
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  So when you see or hear something, this information,
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  this data, it contacts your ego. And the ego in the sense is our
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  habitual reactions, our habitual thoughts, the memories that are
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  triggered, the feelings, the hopes, expectations and worries.
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  And if you want to understand more about this process and how
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  it is an inevitable aspect of our experience, then please go
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  to the series of episodes that I made about Everyday Trance.
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  Even more precisely, ayatana is the term for the whole game of
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  these daily experiences in normal life.
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  It's a term for the home of the ego, again, with its memories
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  and expectations, convictions and feelings, our habits, the
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  habits of the ego. And then when the ego, it leaves
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  home, so to speak, for its daily walks.
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  Then it encounters sights, sounds, people, work, nature,
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  all of these normal daily elements.
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  And this, you know, confirms or it alters the ego, the ego more
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  or less, and its structure stays the same.
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  And this whole game, this exchange between ego and how
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  it's affected by the external circumstances, by what it
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  experiences, this is encapsulated in this Buddhist
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  concept of The Sixth Sense ayatana.
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  The whole game is encapsulated in it.
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  It's fundamentally the understanding that the
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  background or the medium, it determines what foreground you
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  can have. If the medium, for example, is
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  canvas, what you can do with it is limited.
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  You can only do the things that are able to do on a canvas.
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  You can paint, you can draw, you can glue some mixed media on it.
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  If you're skilled, you can create beautiful paintings, but
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  what you cannot do is to make a sculpture out of a canvas or on
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  a canvas. You cannot do video art on a
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  canvas. So in a similar way, a
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  consciousness can do only certain things in a mind that is
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  rooted in sensual experiences, and it is not able to do the
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  other things that lie outside of the realm of sensual
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  experiences. The life that comes out of that
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  is the life that we know. It's pleasure and pain, it's
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  hopes and worries, it's pride, anxiety, and regret.
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  To give you an idea about the range of just this sensual
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  normal ayatana, within that big ayatana, this home base or
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  headquarters as I call it, we have other small home bases, and
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  these are our convictions about ourselves and the world.
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  We can have positive convictions that people are essentially good
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  or that I am basically worth loving or I'm capable.
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  So what happens if I have a bad day or if I get negative
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  feedback from partners, family, or work, or I fail to achieve
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  something important? If I have such basically
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  positive convictions about myself and the world, I will
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  bounce back to my positive outlook.
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  Why? Because my positive convictions
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  are my home. This is what I go where I go
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  back to. This is where I sleep.
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  This is where I start my new adventures from.
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  This is what I go back to. This is where I feel
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  comfortable. Positivity is my home, so even
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  if I experience something negative, I will bounce back.
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  Now in my experience in therapy, I deal usually with the
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  opposite, which is when people have negative convictions like I
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  am not a good person or I am not capable or not worthy of love or
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  equally the world is a horrible place.
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  If this is my home, then even if I have positive feedback, even
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  if I achieve something important, I will eventually
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  bounce back to my negative belief.
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  Why? Because this is where I built my
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  home, this is where I go back to so such changes from negative
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  convictions into positive ones. This is the job of therapy or in
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  best case of self development. But even when I can change these
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  convictions, people are still rooted or from a Buddhist
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  perspective, stuck in the sensual ayatana, the 6th sense
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  ayatana. In different words.
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  If I can play the game better, I might win more, but it's still
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  the same game from a Buddhist perspective.
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  But Buddhism doesn't use ayatana just to describe how
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  consciousness is stuck. That would be a very negative,
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  sober and dire perspective. The Buddhist text actually
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  encourage us to fully understand what this game is and what these
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  limitations of this game are, and to get to a more refined
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  home base, to more refined headquarters.
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  For example, one teaching says when a person sees the six
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  ayatanas clearly, how they arise and how they pass away, then
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  they are free. In other words, if you
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  understand the whole mechanics of this central realm in which
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  we're usually in in our daily life, then this is the key for
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  the Buddhist liberation. So both the Buddhist theoretical
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  teachings and the practical meditation practices are a
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  vehicle to leave the rat race of the central realm and to leave
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  it behind. The practices of either letting
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  go or intense concentration, or we pass on our mindfulness or
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  kindness, loving kindness, they all elevate our experience to
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  another level away from the central realm.
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  At first, this new experience is just a refreshing vacation,
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  while our home base, our home, our headquarters still remains
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  in the central Realm. But with deeper insights and a
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  broader experiences that come through the practices, it
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  becomes pointless to go back home in the central realm.
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  Why? Because those vacations, they
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  show me that another way of living, another world exists.
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  And it is so much more refined. It is so much more subtly
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  pleasant. It is so much more safe than
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  anything that the central realm with adoration, acceptance,
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  money, power, fame, the fulfillment of sensual needs any
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  of this can provide. And people who have taken those
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  vacations regularly and are able to stabilize their experience
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  with them, they long for having not just the vacations there,
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  but to actually move there, to build their home there.
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  And this is what the Buddhist texts of the teachings and what
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  the meditation practices encourage us to do.
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  Now, I completely understand that when people hear that and
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  where they got fascinated with this idea because it sounds
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  amazing, I see that this kind of gives rise to the dangers of
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  escapism and of spiritual bypassing.
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  Spiritual bypassing means that essentially you have very
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  concrete problems in this life and you want to just not do the
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  work and put the real work in it and kind of transcend these
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  issues and as a whole mature being to go to this other realm.
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  No, you want to cut it short. You want to do an intense
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  whatever workshop retreat or get ordained, leave all those
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  problems behind without solving them, and then just get
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  established in this new place. This is rarely goes well the
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  development from the central realm to the more refined
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  realms. The more refined ayatanas in
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  Buddhism usually involve a whole change, an improvement of the
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  personality in the central realm, for example, through
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  ethical behaviour, ethical thinking, ethical communication,
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  so that the whole personality is, if unified in this
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  positivity and that it's ready, so to speak, to be elevated by
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  the practice. To put it differently, if the
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  personality is not wholesome in general, it will not be able to
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  completely transcend the central realm and move to another
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  headquarters, move to another ayatana.
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  But it will be partly stuck and it's unconscious in the
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  frictions and the aggression and the desires of the unsatisfied
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  need needs. And it will, because these will
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  be still rooted in the central ayatana.
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  It will be bouncing back to will be dragged back into it, and so
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  the escapes into the spiritual realms will remain a fancy
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  fantasy. Nonetheless, in these talks
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  about Ayasana, I will want to treat them as Buddhism describes
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  it. So leaving aside the problems of
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  spiritual bypassing and escapism, and I want to treat it
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  as the necessary relocations on the path to liberation.
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  So that was the first glimpse into the topic of ayatana.
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  I have written article, two articles about the text. 1 is a
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  short one, one bit more in depth with kubotes.
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  I will leave the links to those articles in the description in
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  the next episode. I want to show that this
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  knowledge of ayatanas is not exclusive to Buddhism.
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  I think it's the most precise and most kind of mechanically,
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  precisely put to text, put to paper in the Buddhist text.
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  But I think that many spiritual traditions, mystical traditions,
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  esoteric traditions, especially if they involve practices and
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  also in Hegelian philosophy, that they have an understanding
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  of this. So in the next episode, I want
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  to dedicate some space to showing how other spiritual
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  traditions basically have a very similar idea.
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  My goal with doing that is to show that Buddhism does not have
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  a monopoly on the understanding of ayatanas.
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  Actually, Buddhism wants to transcend any ayatanas.
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  It is just an intermediary goal to move to a more refined
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  headquarters. The goal is liberation, and
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  liberation means that there is no ayatanas left at all.
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  And then in the third episode, I will describe aspects of
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  meditation practices which will support at least vacations from
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  the sensual realms and to transcend those sensory ayatanas
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  and sensory home bases. Because of course it can just be
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  a glimpse. It is.
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  It needs talent and dedication and patience to do actually
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  those, you know, relocations to other yatanas.
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  And I cannot claim that I have basically a shorter recipe to do
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  that. But nonetheless, I want to show
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  you what those practices would be so that you can get a glimpse
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  if you are interested to proceed further in that direction.
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  I thank you for your attention. Let me know if you have
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  questions and I will be happy to address them.
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  Until then, I see you the next time.