Exploring the Ten Fetters with a Zen eye

At the start of this year, I started to discuss the Ten Fetters in our weekly Zen meetings in Northampton, and I did a condensed reprise of them in our online Saturday meeting today. In the end, I had to race to finish on time (didn't quite make it!), so as a challenge to myself to be more brief, I'm giving myself one last chance to explore the Ten Fetters concisely!

The Ten Fetters are outlined in the Sangiti Sutta (DN33), part of the earliest surviving canonical Buddhist scriptures. They're not often talked about in Zen circles,  but being aware of these mental hindrances can offer valuable insights and guidance for Zennies, allowing us to deepen our practice and move more freely in the world.

The Ten Fetters, or Samyojana, are described as mental obstacles that bind individuals to the cycle of suffering (samsara). They include fundamental misconceptions such as identity view, doubt, attachment to rituals, sensual desire, ill will, attachment to form, attachment to formless realms, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. Each fetter represents a layer of delusion that obscures our innate wisdom and prevents us from realizing our true nature. I won't go into detail on each of these as I'm aiming for conciseness here. I'll save that for the book...! [Lol the thought of me writing a book on Zen or Buddhism!!!]

It's not part of normal Zen practice to analyse the contents or processes of our consciousness in detail. I'm sure, though, that part of the fruit of Zen practice is precisely the sort of clarity and wisdom that can give us a good place to stand in considering these, becoming aware of our own mental states and tendencies. Such insight is crucial for spotting the arising and the effects of these Fetters in our practice, our relationships, our work lives, and in all of our lives. 

Zen often demands we let go of fixed views, desires, and attachments, and this is very much in the spirit of overcoming the fetters. Considering the Fetters allows us to deepen our insight into the impermanence and insubstantiality of all phenomena through the study of the Ten Fetters. For me, this is the heart of the tenth Fetter, ignorance (avidya), and as I said this morning, if we could only keep one from the list it would be this one, as it encapsulates all the others. 

The breaking of these chains that bind us to our storied selves is not a simple one-off process but a lifetime's graft, and I see myself fail at it all the time. But fail again, try again, I tell myself. Don't be attached to the results, just get used to seeing the world as it stands before us, before we impose upon it our own desires, conceits, doubts, fixed views and all the rest.

Gassho,

Alasdair Taisen