The Four Floods

The term "floods" speaks for itself : the overwhelmed, swept-along feeling that comes as we get plunged into stress and suffering. In the Buddhist texts, the word is sometimes used in the broad sense of the mind being overwhelmed by sorrow, lamentation and despair in full-blown dukkha or to the existential dukkha of our being carried along in the flood of ageing, sickness and death.

On occasion, the floods refer to five key hindrances that clog the mind :  sense craving, ill-will, dullness and torpor, restless worry and doubt. Meditators in particular know how any of these five can hinder the mind from realizing the clarity and peace that they are aiming for.

In the most specific use however, the floods (ogha) refer to four currents, also called "outflows" (asava), that run underneath the bubbling stream of mental activity. There they remain unseen but yet direct the flow of that stream. Sounds eerie? Well if you sit still in silence for a little while, with no particular preoccupation, you will notice the mind starts wandering ... to this and to that ... towards things you plan or have to do, to memories of what you had done, good or bad or had done onto you ... to ideas of things that you would like to have.

At times, you may find yourself reliving a fragment of your history or anticipating a scene that you are going to have to deal with. And along with that come judgements, opinions of what you should have done or about the other person. All of these has a certain reality, though based on a few scanty observations. Yet, this is the stream of mental activity that absorbs our attention and informs our actions and it arises unbidden and seems unstoppable.

We have little, if any, control over it and the stream is so usual that it is difficult to imagine how we would sense ourselves without it. In fact, the only conclusion that this inner stream presents, as it takes us into the past and future, desires and problems is the implication that this uncontrollable wandering on (samsara) is what we actually are.

However, we can study it and that indicates that a degree of stepping out of samsara is possible. And following on from that, we can take note of the four currents (floods) that the Buddha had pointed out. This will give us a vantage point from where we can jump in or stay out of the stream of mental activity.

The four floods are : the flood of sensuality, the flood of becoming, the flood of views and the flood of ignorance.