Sometimes we try to learn too much, too fast. That’s why it’s good to let the concept of sakkaya ditthi sink in for a long time. We need time to ponder the thought that we are not what we thought we were. How many people can hear the teaching of no self and grasp it right away?
Sakkaya ditthi, the wrong view of self, the belief in a permanent, independent self, is the first of the ten fetters that bind us to delusion. If it takes forever just to break through sakkaya ditthi and to acquire the right view of self, how long will it take to break all ten fetters?
Obviously, if we try to break all ten at once, we’ll probably make a mess of it.
So let’s look at the next two fetters, just to see if they are as difficult to break away from as is sakkaya ditthi.
The second fetter is doubt, doubt that the Buddhadharma is really true. If one doesn’t doubt the Buddhadharma, one must be brain dead. Of course we doubt that all of our thoughts prior to encountering the Buddhadharma were the thoughts of a deluded individual. Just to be told that we are not independent entities living in an external world is enough to set off the doubt bells in any thinker.
So it is comforting to know that doubt is normal, and is indeed the second of the ten fetters. That sure makes the first two fetters easy to remember.
But the third fetter is bizarre. It’s a fetter that most of us 21st Century people just don’t have. It must’ve been a problem in the Buddha’s time. It’s attachment to rites and rituals, for crying out loud, the belief that performing rituals will lead to enlightenment. For those of us who have performed virtually no rites or rituals and hardly know what they are, this doesn’t seem to be a major fetter.
Interestingly, one who breaks the first three fetters is deemed a “stream enterer,” a person who is down to their last seven (7) lifetimes, each of which will be a human lifetime. That assurance certainly sets the doubt bells a’ringing again.
We can spend a few days or weeks or months or years contemplating these first three fetters. With daily practice, maybe the doubts will go away and we will find ourselves entering the stream. After all, daily practice is not a rite or a ritual, is it?
Cultivation is neither rite nor ritual. The desire to practice is not a sense desire. We can cultivate daily. No one can prevent us from daily cultivation. The first three fetters will fall away and we will enter the stream.
