Physician Gabor Maté contributed to a paradigm shift in understanding addiction, trauma and human suffering. What he argues is that trauma isn’t the initial wound or event that happens to people, but the reaction in response to what happens. The physician Siddhatha Gotama argued there is a tendency to get rid of suffering by clinging or holding onto it, by pushing or pulling against it. This is a guide which emphasizes the strategy of evening out by developing a stream of even view, even drive, even speech, even actions, even livelihood, even effort, even awareness, even evening.

It runs through teachings such as jhana, dependent origination, and highlights them from without a necessarily Buddhist religious perspective. Instead, there is a potential for a general contemplative view, putting empiricism before religion, and recognizing the efforts from a variety of paths.

Legitimacy
The first hindrance against jhanas and dependent origination is skeptical doubt. When Ayya Khema was teaching jhana’s, she initially got a lot of flack. Ven. K. Nananande likewise. It stems from the belief that it wouldn’t be possible. Leigh Brasington’s brain has been scanned on jhanas, and all three of these teachers have produced guides that allow for any individual to pursue and find out for themselves.

Whether one is skeptical of the ability to practice jhana depends on the level of wisdom, which allows one to make discernments in determining which path to take. If wisdom is already developed, wisdom can be recognized and efforted towards. This is a short description of what is known as an eightfold practice. Wisdom, recognition or awareness, and effort; these three circle around and directly develop the paths we take.

If this is done to the point of seclusion from distractions, there can be jhana, translated also as immersion, concentration, undistractability. These states have been practiced before Gotama Buddha – he himself was taught them by others – and the states are described by many nuns and monks. For Fransisco de Osuna, author of a guide heralded by Teresa and Avila and others, he stressed the importance of conscience.¹

Ayya Khema mentioned Carmelite nuns visited her with questions about these states, interested in learning them. She said many of her students could practice the first few of them.

Legitimacy from a responsibility to heal
Both Jesus and the Buddha gave a diagnosis as to the human problem. Prof. Donald Carveth interprets the diagnosis of Christianity to be narcissism. For the Buddha, the root of the problem is Mannana, the hypostasizing of self when it really wasn’t there in the first place. For the narcissist, the world turns around their sense of self. In Mannana, there wasn’t a self at the places it was conceived to be.

They both made further diagnoses. Jesus once mentioned that before one criticizes someone else, to first look at the beam in ones eye. Likewise, the Buddha saw how the mind is afflicted by a dart. His four noble truths: there is dukkha², this arises dependent upon this dart thirst, dependent upon ceasing the conditions leading to this dart, the ceases, the path leading to the ceasing of the conditions of the dart is eightfold.

On a societal level there are world changing events. People are aware of where they had been when it happened. If the world is understood as being dependently arisen in six sense bases, the world can be confronted with choices that lead to its reconditioning for the worse. Regardless of religion, this can translate to a simple responsibility to even out the dart.

Dependent origination
The key discovery of Gotama Buddha wasn’t the jhanas. His key discovery was that these states can lead to insight into the laws of dependent arising. The insight into dependent origination happens in at least eight milestones. For the first level of understanding, this only has to be understood at the level of five heaps mistakenly considered to have a stable or permanent identity: the material body is dependently arisen and impermanent, experiences, conceptualizations, choices, consciousness. Based on 55:5 SN, such a person further is someone one who has evened out and entered a path beyond any grasping: even view, even drive, even speech, even action, even livelihood, even effort, even awareness, even evening.

Practically, evening or jhana means the recursive cycling together of these factors: the evening of effort leads to a greater about of even effort being available, which allows for a greater evening of effort. That greater evening of effort can lead to a greater evening of view. One who develops this path to the point of it being beyond any grasping has won the stream, the path.

117 MN give a very detailed breakdown of the eight factors. There are basic or mundane dimensions. There are also transcendental or intuitive dimensions. Without the basics, the development at an intuive level will be difficult. That is, if one has a view: greed is good, then that view should uneven the rest of the path.

Even instead of Right
For the path, most translators use right or proper in the sense of aligning. In my understanding that is achieved through these factors evening with each other. ‘Right effort’ becomes right precisely when it is even with wisdom. And this self-recursive feature of the path developing the path is essential.

Wisdom
Even View
Even Drives or Intentions
Dependent upon their view of the world, and the way it works, their can be intentions or drives. Often there are conflicting drives. Wholesome paths can be simultaneously hindered or hurt by other paths. And so the first basic drive that needs to be developed is renunciation. Renunciation means being able to say no to distracting paths. The other ones are non-cruelty and non-ill will.

Ethics
Even speech
Even action
Even livelihood

Evening
Even effort
An even effort is very important. If the effort dependent upon which one developes awareness of the breath is uneven, there can be pressure on the breath. If there is even effort on the breath or the other bases of development for awareness, one can find out how the path goes against the stream. If one doesn’t have a strong drive to develop the path, the mind gets flooded by unawareness, views, becoming, sense desire. The even effort can be counted by the dart, the burning craving taking over. The even effort can be sabotaged by pushing and pulling (clinging) against it.

Even awareness
Instead of mindfulness, I understand Sati (Pali) as awareness. There are four bases for the development of awareness: the 1. breath, 2. experiences, 3. mind state or set, 4. mental objects, phenomena or appearances. These interact. If with wisdom it is discerned the mind is set to worry, there will appear in the mind objects of worry. Dependent upon this awareness arising dependent upon wisdom, and dependent upon a wholesome drive, there can be an effort leading to the cessation of the conditions dependent upon which there arises that mental state.

1. This paper provides an analysis of these states.
   https://www.themathesontrust.org/library/the-buddhist-jhanas-and-mystical-prayer-and-its-degrees ↩︎
2. It stems from the word dukkha. Dukkha derived from kha, or the opening of a wheel axle, and then du signifying something that causes it to not run smoothly. The opposite, Sukkha, is understood as being filled with happiness. Dukkha is mostly tranlated as suffering, stress, dissatisfactoriness, Leigh translates it as bummer. ↩︎