3. Perfection of Renunciation (Nekkhamma) Renunciation in Buddhism can be understood as letting go of whatever binds us to suffering and ignorance. That doesn’t sound so bad, right?  This is easier said than done, because those things that bind us are the very things we often think we must have to be happy.  The Buddha taught that genuine renunciation requires thoroughly perceiving how we make ourselves unhappy by grasping and greediness.  When we do, renunciation naturally follows, and it is a positive and liberating act, not a punishment.  Renunciation is said to be perfected by wisdom, which is the next parami. 

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Renunciation

-Gil Fronsdal

Even though it doesn’t take much mindfulness to recognize that suffering comes with clinging, we often find it hard to let go of clinging-or even to see letting go as possible or worthwhile. Strong feelings of desire often come with a compulsion that makes the desire seem necessary. Or we may approach clinging like a lottery-we are willing to bear the risk of suffering in exchange for the chance that the clinging will bring us well-being. Furthermore, letting go can be frightening. Clinging may give us a sense of taking care of ourselves-holding tight to security, judgements, people, self-identity, or possessions are all ways of protecting ourselves. People may not know how to function in the world without the motivation and self-identity that come from clinging.

Renunciation is often difficult. Grappling with the power of desire, attachments, and fear may require great personal struggle. But that struggle yields many benefits. We develop the inner strength to overcome temptation and compulsion. We don’t have to live with the suffering and contraction that come with clinging. Clinging can be exhausting; letting go is restful. We may taste the luminous mind of freedom, which is hidden when clinging is present. And, last but not least, we are more available to work for the welfare of others.

Renunciation should bring joy, or at least a lightness of being. If it is done with resentment or resistance, then the renunciation is not thorough-some clinging remains. We need continued mindfulness to understand what we still need to let go of.

Suzuki Roshi once defined renunciation as accepting that things pass away, that things change. This definition points to two things. First, sometimes renunciation takes the form of wise surrender to what is unavoidable. Second, at its heart, the practice of renunciation requires an inner change that may or may not require external renunciation. If the heart is still contracted, if the mind is still tight or hot, then the renunciation is incomplete. In fact, external renunciation without a corresponding inner release may strengthen clinging. 

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Trading Candy for Gold – Renunciation as a Skill 

-Thanissaro Bhikkhu 

Buddhism takes a familiar American principle — the pursuit of happiness — and inserts two  important qualifiers. The happiness it aims at is true: ultimate, unchanging, and undeceitful. Its  pursuit of that happiness is serious, not in a grim sense, but dedicated, disciplined, and willing to  make intelligent sacrifices.  What sort of sacrifices are intelligent? The Buddhist answer to this question resonates with  another American principle: an intelligent sacrifice is any in which you gain a greater  happiness by letting go of a lesser one, in the same way you’d give up a bag of candy if offered  a pound of gold in exchange. In other words, an intelligent sacrifice is like a profitable trade. This  analogy is an ancient one in the Buddhist tradition. “I’ll make a trade,” one of the Buddha’s  disciples once said, “aging for the Ageless, burning for the Unbound: the highest peace, the  unexcelled safety from bondage.”  There’s something in all of us that would rather not give things up. We’d prefer to keep the candy  and get the gold. But maturity teaches us that we can’t have everything, that to indulge in one  pleasure often involves denying ourselves another, perhaps better, one. Thus we need to establish  clear priorities for investing our limited time and energies where they’ll give the most lasting  returns.  

That means giving top priority to the mind. Material things and social relationships are unstable  and easily affected by forces beyond our control, so the happiness they offer is fleeting and  undependable. But the well-being of a well-trained mind can survive even aging, illness, and  death. To train the mind, though, requires time and energy. This is one reason why the pursuit of  true happiness demands that we sacrifice some of our external pleasures. 

Sacrificing external pleasures also frees us of the mental burdens that holding onto them often  entails. A famous story in the Canon tells of a former king who, after becoming a monk, sat down  at the foot of a tree and exclaimed, “What bliss! What bliss!” His fellow monks thought he was  pining for the pleasures he had enjoyed as king, but he later explained to the Buddha exactly what  bliss he had in mind:  “Before… I had guards posted within and without the royal apartments, within and without the  city, within and without the countryside. But even though I was thus guarded, thus protected, I  dwelled in fear — agitated, distrustful, and afraid. But now, on going alone to a forest, to the foot  of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, I dwell without fear, unagitated, confident, and unafraid —  unconcerned, unruffled, my wants satisfied, with my mind like a wild deer.”  A third reason for sacrificing external pleasures is that in pursuing some pleasures — such as our  addictions to eye-candy, ear-candy, nose-, tongue-, and body-candy — we foster qualities of  greed, anger, and delusion that actively block the qualities needed for inner peace. Even if we had  all the time and energy in the world, the pursuit of these pleasures would lead us further and  further away from the goal. They are spelled out in the path factor called Right Resolve: the  resolve to forego any pleasures involving sensual passion, ill will, and harmfulness. “Sensual  passion” covers not only sexual desire, but also any hankering for the pleasures of the senses that   disrupts the peace of the mind. “Ill will” covers any wish for suffering, either for oneself or for  others. And “harmfulness” is any activity that would bring that suffering about. Of these three  categories, the last two are the easiest to see as worth abandoning. They’re not always easy to  abandon, perhaps, but the resolve to abandon them is obviously a good thing. The first resolve,  though — to renounce sensual passion — is difficult even to make, to say nothing of following it  through.  

Part of our resistance to this resolve is universally human. People everywhere relish their  passions. Even the Buddha admitted to his disciples that, when he set out on the path of practice,  his heart didn’t leap at the idea of renouncing sensual passion, didn’t see it as offering peace. But  an added part of our resistance to renunciation is peculiar to Western culture. Modern pop  psychology teaches that the only alternative to a healthy indulgence of our sensual passions is an  unhealthy, fearful repression. Yet both of these alternatives are based on fear: repression, on a  fear of what the passion might do when expressed or even allowed into consciousness;  indulgence, on a fear of deprivation and of the under-the-bed monster the passion might become  if resisted and driven underground. Both alternatives place serious limitations on the mind. The  Buddha, aware of the drawbacks of both, had the imagination to find a third alternative: a  fearless, skillful approach that avoids the dangers of either side. 

To understand his approach, though, we have to see how Right Resolve relates to other parts of  the Buddhist path, in particular Right View and Right Concentration. In the formal analysis of the  path, Right Resolve builds on Right View; in its most skillful manifestation, it functions as the  directed thought and evaluation that bring the mind to Right Concentration. Right View provides  a skillful understanding of sensual pleasures and passions, so that our approach to the problem  doesn’t go off-target; Right Concentration provides an inner stability and bliss so that we can  clearly see the roots of passion and at the same time not fear deprivation at the prospect of pulling  them out. 

There are two levels to Right View, focusing (1) on the results of our actions in the narrative of  our lives and (2) on the issues of stress and its cessation within the mind. The first level points out  the drawbacks of sensual passion: sensual pleasures are fleeting, unstable, and stressful; passion  for them lies at the root of many of the ills of life, ranging from the hardships of gaining and  maintaining wealth, to quarrels within families and wars between nations. This level of Right  View prepares us to see the indulgence of sensual passion as a problem. The second level —  viewing things in terms of the four noble truths — shows us how to solve this problem in our  approach to the present moment. It points out that the root of the problem lies not in the pleasures  but in the passion, for passion involves attachment, and any attachment for pleasures based on  conditions leads inevitably to stress and suffering, in that all conditioned phenomena are subject  to change. In fact, our attachment to sensual passion tends to be stronger and more constant than  our attachments to particular pleasures. This attachment is what has to be renounced.  How is this done? By bringing it out into the open. Both sides of sensual attachment – as habitual  patterns from the past and our willingness to give into them again in the present – are based on  misunderstanding and fear. As the Buddha pointed out, sensual passion depends on aberrant  perceptions: we project notions of constancy, ease, beauty, and self onto things that are actually  inconstant, stressful, unattractive, and not-self. These misperceptions apply both to our passions  and to their objects. We perceive the expression of our sensuality as something appealing, a deep   expression of our self-identity offering lasting pleasure; we see the objects of our passion as  enduring and alluring enough, as lying enough under our control, to provide us with a satisfaction  that won’t turn into its opposite. Actually, none of this is the case, and yet we blindly believe our  projections because the power of our passionate attachments has us too intimidated to look them  straight in the eye. Their special effects thus keep us dazzled and deceived. As long as we deal  only in indulgence and repression, attachment can continue operating freely in the dark of the  sub-conscious. But when we consciously resist it, it has to come to the surface, articulating its  threats, demands, and rationalizations. So even though sensual pleasures aren’t evil, we have to  systematically forego them as a way of drawing the agendas of attachment out into the open. This  is how skillful renunciation serves as a learning tool, unearthing latent agendas that both  indulgence and repression tend to keep underground.  At the same time, we need to provide the mind with strategies to withstand those agendas and to  cut through them once they appear. This is where Right Concentration comes in. As a skillful  form of indulgence, Right Concentration suffuses the body with a non-sensual rapture and  pleasure that can help counteract any sense of deprivation in resisting sensual passions. In other  words, it provides higher pleasures — more lasting and refined — as a reward for abandoning  attachment to lower ones. At the same time it gives us the stable basis we need so as not to be  blown away by the assaults of our thwarted attachments. This stability also steadies the  mindfulness and alertness we need to see through the misperceptions and delusions that underlie  sensual passion. And once the mind can see through the processes of projection, perception, and  misperception to the greater sense of freedom that comes when they are transcended, the basis for  sensual passion is gone.  –  At this stage, we can then turn to analyze our attachment to the pleasures of Right Concentration.  When our understanding is complete, we abandon all need for attachment of any sort, and thus  meet with the pure gold of a freedom so total that it can’t be described.  –  The question remains: how does this strategy of skillful renunciation and skillful indulgence  translate into everyday practice? People who ordain as monastics take vows of celibacy and are  expected to work constantly at renouncing sensual passion, but for many people this is not a  viable option. The Buddha thus recommended that his lay followers observe day-long periods of  temporary renunciation. Four days out of each month — traditionally on the new-, full-, and halfmoon days — they can take the eight precepts, which add the following observances to the  standard five: celibacy, no food after noon, no watching of shows, no listening to music, no use of  perfumes and cosmetics, and no use of luxurious seats and beds. The purpose of these added  precepts is to place reasonable restraints on all five of the senses. The day is then devoted to  listening to the Dhamma, to clarify Right View; and to practicing meditation, to strengthen Right  Concentration. Although the modern work-week can make the lunar scheduling of these day-long  retreats impractical, there are ways they can be integrated into weekends or other days off from  work. In this way, anyone interested can, at regular intervals, trade the cares and complexities of  everyday life for the chance to master renunciation as a skill integral to the serious pursuit of  happiness in the truest sense of the word.  And isn’t that an intelligent trade?

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Renunciation

Reflections and Practices

The following reflections and practices are offered for your exploration of the Perfection of Renunciation. Both the reflections and the practices can be enriched by discussing them with friends, fellow practitioners, strangers, and if you have chosen to have one, with your Dharma Practice Day buddy. A useful way of engaging with the reflections is to spend a few days with each one, perhaps rereading the reflection to see what new perspectives repeated readings provide. It can be nice to devote some quiet time to focus on these reflections, perhaps while going for a walk or drinking tea.

Reflections:

1. It is often said that people resist teachings on renunciation. What are your concerns and views about the value of renunciation? What reservations and fears do you have about the practice of renunciation? What is attractive to you about this practice? In what ways do you understand renunciation differently than the practice of letting go?

2. In what areas of your life could you benefit from practicing renunciation? What motivations or impulses would renunciation help to overcome in those areas? What motivations and understandings would make renunciation easier? Write down a list of all ways you might benefit from renouncing particular things.

3. Under what circumstances is it difficult for you to let go of things you want to let go of? In what circumstances is it easiest? What inner states of being support skillful letting go? What inner states make it difficult?

4. What would be the single most useful thing for you to let go of? Find someone to discuss why this would be useful and what makes it difficult to accomplish.

Practices:

1. Look for an instance when you are strongly clinging to something. Go off by yourself and spend some time observing and reflecting on the clinging. Don’t try to let go. Rather take the time to study as much about the clinging as you can.

2. Choose something you do regularly to renounce for a day. Throughout that day, actively investigate and consider how this renunciation might benefit you. For example, does the act of renouncing help highlight things about yourself that you had previously not seen well?

3. Find situations where you can give something up out of compassion or concern for others. What is it like for you to give something up when it is motivated by compassion?