The First Steps to Awakening
FetterWork as a path to Awakening
The first point I need to make completely clear is that all the Fetters are concepts pointing in the direction of clarity.
They are not meant to keep using or to even replace a previous dogma.
They are tools you use and when you have understood what you needed to understand you leave them.
Normally you regard the fetter as a ladder and you have to go through one before you can work with the next.
We saw how that was more a stick in the wheel than a helpful tool and we also saw how it very easily made the concept of the Fetters into a “real thing”.
That is not conducive with a process of non-identifying!
So we created “The Wheel of Identification.
Feel free to make a screen shot.
As you see the wheel is not in “the right order”.
We did that to emphasise that life is messy and nothing happens linear!
Notice however how the pairs are opposite one another so the 1st fetter of identification is a nothing but a crude form of the 8th fetter “I AM!” conceit.
Or the other way around; when you feel “I am God” or “I am Awareness” which is a 8th fetter delusion you can use the lessons from the 1st fetter as a support to look deeper into the hooks of identification.
Enjoy.
Feel free to make a screen shot.
All the fetters come with antidotes or mantras if you will that supports the insight in the given fetter.
So using the above mentioned example when you then are 1st fetter identifying you use the antidote of non-Self and if that does not help you can use the antidote in the 8th fetter pair and ask yourself “Ok, what is it I need to understand?”
It helps to learn the antidotes and have them as a part of your every day life.
You do not have to know which fetter you are stuck in to use them.
At any point can you call on stillness, calm, observation, presence and contentment.
Enjoy
The Buddhist Origin & What To Do next
In the Alagaddupama sutta the clinging to a view is addressed with the simili of building a make shift raft to cross a river and when you get to the other side you leave the twigs and branches that helped you getting there.
It no longer serves you to carry it with you.
I mention it now because you will experience periods where you cling to something that you either think works (belief) or to something that used to work.
Let it go.
Put yourself in the freedom of no-thing and see where it takes you.
There are obviously many ways to reach the same point.
There are as many ways to do FetterWork as there are people on the planet!
Your job is to find the way that works for you.
On this page I will give you different tools you can use.
They might be useful, they might not be.
Only you know that.
Remember that even though you might have tried something once that did not work does not mean it will never work.
So if you come across something that makes no sense, just leave it and get back to it at a later point.
THE 4 NOBLE TRUTHS
So how do you start?
Well, we have to start somewhere and in my opinion we start at the beginning with The 4 Noble Truths which knowledge create the foundation for the 1st Fetter.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu has done a huge job collecting texts explaining The 4 Noble Truths which you can find here
THE 3 IMPOSSIBLES
In my opinion this knowledge is really important and it has been immensely useful for me when I was working with the 5 lower fetters.
So lets start at the beginning.
We all get sick. If we are lucky we will get old and for sure we are all going to die.
We know that, but we do not want it to be so!
So we do everything in our power to fight against it happening and when it happens we get so surprised and ask “why did this happen to me?!”
But nothing has happened to you.
Life just happened.
The inevitable just happened.
That we believe it to be something against us is part of the suffering.
When I say suffering I am not only referring to all the truly horrendous things that is happening.
I am also talking about all the small every day stuff.
The annoyance you feel towards a colleague at work.
The anger you feel in traffic or watching the news.
The sadness you feel when you lose a loved one.
The stress you feel when you are under pressure financially or timewise.
Suffering refers to everything that removes you from the state of peace and love.
Suffering is that rollercoaster ride we experience but it is also the feelings we have when we are recovering after the trip on the rollercoaster.
Suffering is also everything we do, to get away from what we dont want.
But the suffering is also the anguish we feel when we finally have achieved what we wanted and are now fighting to keep it and fear we will lose it.
Let’s take dieting as an example.
The stepping on the scale is suffering.
The planning and the keeping the diet is suffering.
But reaching the goal is also suffering because while you might be happy and content with your achievement you now have to fight to keep the weight off and you are in fear of gaining it all back.
So everything you dont want is suffering.
Everything you do to avoid it is suffering and everything you do to keep your achievements is suffering too.
As you see; there is not much left!
These foundational things we battle with are called The 3 Lakshanas.
I call them “The 3 Impossibles” because they are impossible to achieve!
You can read what Thanissaro Bhikkhu has written about them here
The 3 Impossibles are the 3 things that is in a certain way but we do not want it to be like that.
The first of the 3 impossibles is “Dukkha”.
It basically means that life is so deeply dissatisfying and we spend our entire lives dealing with that like I just described.
The 2nd impossible is “Anicca”.
That is about impermanence.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Everything is in a constant flux.
“What is, will be was” as the saying goes.
Our death is part of this Anicca.
Your life is finite.
It will end.
That is Anicca.
Anicca is the “This too shall pass” teaching.
The last of the impossibles is “Annata”.
That one is the 1st fetter and for many people the most difficult one to come to terms with.
It is about that there is no separate self.
There is no “you” anywhere.
If you think about it.
Is your body “you”?
Most people will right away agree with that the body is not “me”.
“I” am something else than just the body you might say.
So, is your mind “you”?
Again most people will agree that the mind is not “me” either.
“I” am something else than just the mind you might say.
But then let me ask you; if you are not the body and you are not the mind then where is the “you”?
That is the paradox of the Ego.
I have made a lot of videos about the Ego identification which you can find on my Youtube channel.
You can not find the part of “you” that you see as the “someone believing itself to exist” anywhere which can be so frustrating to discover since we spend our entire lives shaping and defending the “I”, “me”, “my”, “mine” against “you”, “yours”, “them”, “theirs”
I call these 3 for ““The 3 Impossibles” because if you think about it you will find that all the suffering in your life exist because of these 3 and you refuse it to be like that!
When you work with the 10 fetters you will experience that the suffering and discontentment in your life evaporates.
Not that it disappears, it cant, we just saw that in The 3 Impossibles, but the experience of what is happening is no longer a suffering.
It just is.
A very important part of Buddhism is that you are never supposed to take anything for granted.
Do not believe anything!
Nothing is truth just because someone is telling you it is truth.
And nothing is truth just because it is written down as a truth.
In the Kalama Sutta the Buddha makes that very clear!
You need to test it yourself.
What I am talking about here and in my audios and videos is just what is truth to me.
How it works for me.
Not the truth for everyone.
So you need to test it yourself and see if it works for you.
If it does; great!
You just keep going then.
If it doesn’t; great!
Let it go and find out what does.
One of the most important teachings regarding FetterWork is the one we learn in the Bahiya sutta
"Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus:
'In the seen there is simply what is seen;
in the heard there is simply what is heard;
in the sensed there is simply what is sensed;
in the cognized there is simply what is cognized.'
In this way you should train yourself, Bahiya..”
— Bahiya Sutta, UD 1.10
What this sutta is teaching us is to keep our experiences to what we actually, factually know to be true since everything else is not truth.
I call it reality and fantasy.
What you see, hear, smell, taste and sensory feel is truth.
So it is what another person can sit next to you and also see, hear, smell, taste or sensory feel is therefor truth.
Everything else is fantasy.
The one exception to this is obviously when you sensory feel an ache in the body.
A person next to you cant experience that pain like you do.
But the sutta makes it very clear that you need to be diligent in your awareness about what is actual, factual pain and actual, factual sensory hurt and what is added on by the mind, you see; we tend to do that!
A lot!
That is why meditation, breath work and hypnosis is so efficient.
Because it is not actual, factual pain the body and actual, factual sensory pain experienced but instead pain added to the body by the mind.
If reality and the truth is only the seen, the heard, the tasted, the smelled and the felt then how much in your life, right now, are you perceiving as suffering which really is not?
You see how this potentially can transform everything for you?
When you start to work with the 10 fetters you will discover how much is clearly added to the experience, by the mind.
I call that post-its.
You have an experience and the mind add a post-it to the experience.
Let’s say you stomp your toe.
That hurts.
Now according to the Bahiya sutta it ends there.
The pain in the toe is true reality, that part is truth.
It hurts.
Everything that comes after that actual factual pain is post-it added by the mind.
The “dang it you are clumsy” or the “why did they leave the door half open?” are the first post-its.
What happens now is that the mind will build on top of the post-its.
It will no longer build on the experience!
So a “Typical you! You have always been so clumsy” or an “ENOUGH! CLOSE THAT BLOODY DOOR!” shouted out loud is no longer a reaction to the actual factual pain in the toe but instead build on top on the post-it just created because of the pain in the toe.
The mind does not stop there.
The mind will keep building more and more onto the previous post-it.
That is why you can find families not talking to one another because of something that happened years ago that nobody can remember what it was actually about, but everyone are still very miffed.
For us to start and sort out this giant mess we use something called “direct pointing”.
I see direct pointing as being the equivalent to when we in mathematics find the cross sum.
You know when you find out what a single digit is no matter how huge the number is?
And the single digit is always the same no matter what method you use to find it.
It is the same with direct pointing.
You remove all the obstacles that you know are not true until you sit with the one clue left and that clue will always be the same no matter how you try to find it.
A topic that always comes up when I talk about direct pointing is “spiritual bypassing”.
In my experience spiritual bypassing can only happen when we are not curious.
Spiritual bypassing is when you have a feeling you dont want or an experience that is painful and you use a spiritual reason to avoid looking at it.
So lets say you have body pain but does not want to investigate what reasons there could be for the body pain so you dismiss it with saying “the body is not real anyway, there is no “I”.
That is spiritual bypassing.
Refusing to look at what is.
That is not direct pointing or awareness or spirituality or awakening.
That is gaslighting.
Direct pointing is always happening with a curiosity and it is always investigative.
If you tend to gaslight yourself then you are probably doing it because what is the real reason is way too painful to look at or discover.
Its ok.
Be compassionate with yourself.
Take it one step at a time.
Use unconditional acceptance towards the issue.
I have made a really good video about how to use unconditional acceptance.
You can watch it here.
Spiritual bypassing is cruel because it is basically gaslighting and minimising the experience you had.
If a pain comes up then that is a clear indication that you have a fetter, a hook, into an experience that needs your full compassion, kindness and love.
Not disrespect or impatience is needed.
There has been enough of that.
Create curious awareness and see where it takes you.
It brings me to a very important part of the FetterWork; Spiritual friendships.
In my opinion is it completely impossible for you to do this alone.
You need people around you that are not invested in you on a private personal level but are available for you to draw on when you need it.
Fortunately you will find a huge online network that are doing Fetterwork in many different ways so it is basically up to you to find the type, the group and the guide you connect with the best.
I will get back to that in a sec.
In the Upaddhasutta you will find a conversation between the Buddha and his best friend, Ananda.
Very (very!) loosely translated Ananda says “You know what? This thing about having spiritual friends it really makes up half of the spiritual life!” but the Buddha replies “No, Ananda, spiritual friends is the entire spiritual life! Only by having good spiritual friends and someone to share the path with are we having any spiritual insights at all!”
That was my super paraphrased take on it, you can read the proper translation here
And I agree SO much!
We are all fiddling about in our own little bubble and we need to partly surround ourselves with people on the same wavelength as we are but we also need to be around people who are more spiritual advanced than we are.
It is impossible for you to spot all your ignorant delusions if you haven’t got good people in your life who with kindness and compassion can say “Hang on, hang on! what was that?! Where did that come from?!”.
If not before then you are going to need them for sure when you reach the 5th Fetter.
In the 5th you are so convinced that you are right and whomever are wrong!
You will talk to friends and family and coworkers and they will all agree with you!
Because they love you and they have to socialise with you on a daily basis.
It takes a certain kind of friend to say “Yeah, I hear you. Now let’s find out if it is true”.
You will find those friends in the community.
Thing is; whatever we are clinging on to where we really really want to be right there is always a trauma connected to it and when that surfaces you need people around you when that are not thrown, who knows it is only waves and who has been exactly where you are themselves.
You will find those friends in the community.
Your FetterWork can only happen with spiritual friends.
Period.
The other important aspect of of surrounding us with people on the same wavelength as us has also been confirmed with the discovery of mirror neurones.
You become the people you surround yourself with.
If you are interested in reading more about this then I can warmly recommend you the book “Power vs. Force” by David Hawkins.
For more than 30 years David Hawkins studied how our electromagnetic field is influenced by other peoples electromagnetic field.
If I am to sum it up then this is what happens; if you have a high frequency you will be pulled down by people with a lower frequency.
You feed them until the both of you have a similar frequency.
Which leaves them with more energy than before and you are exhausted and drained.
If you on the other hand surround yourself with people on the same frequency as you, the both of you will increase each others energy and leave uplifted and happy.
If you by now sit with clammy hands and are holding your breath because you really dont want to have anything to do with “spiritual friends” or an entire community for that matter then you are probably autistic (as I am), you are introvert or you have old childhood trauma that has shaped you into an independent people-pleaser.
No matter which it is; welcome my friend.
You are not alone!
Q&A and Inquiry Groups
Every other Friday you can join me for an Awakening Curriculum Q&A. In the members area you find all the information you need and the link for Zoom
You can also join both of us in a FetterWork Inquiry every other Tuesday.
Send Todd an email at UnfetteredMindfulness@gmail.com and he will send you the link.
We look forward to meeting you.
“The greatest delusion about awakening is that you will become wise, where in fact you will become aware of your ignorance”
— Pernille Damore
