I have become accustomed to, and learnt to welcome, signs that have the aspect of death.
The self is a slippery creature, that will struggle and deceive you to survive by any means necessary. Your sense of self is all-pervasive throughout your life and consciousness. Like a background hum you grew up hearing.
The only way to pierce the illusions of the mind is to find one true thing that you can rely on to guide you. Just one will do.
I could say "all conditioned things are impermanent". Whether you believe me or not is unimportant, you need to find it for yourself. Perhaps yours will be a different truth.
When you find it, take it into your mind and heart and let it sit there for a while. Keep it in your mind at all times. Suspend your belief in all other ideas, however sensible they may seem. And just follow your truth, slowly and completely to its end.
It is not enough to understand it intellectually. You must live it in each moment. It must be part of the air you breathe, the water you drink, it must be in your dreams and all your waking thoughts. It is true! Pure! Cling to it, polish it and make a home for it in your innermost thoughts.
Let every mouthful of cornflakes worship this truth. If you feel like you have swallowed a red hot ball of iron that is burning out your insides, it's ok you are doing it right.
Slowly, surely, one by one, other things you believed to be true will start to fall. You will see them as flawed and incomplete. When this happens there will be a tendency to cling to them. Don't. Let them go, and push if needed. As soon an idea or concept or story does not accord with your truth, it is faulty and must be removed from your life.
As you cut off a wrong idea here, and a wrong thought there, you will find your mind is running out of space. You see, if you believe "all conditioned states are impermanent" what does that really mean? Everything you know is temporary, ephemeral. Everything you will ever do will fall and crumble. Everyone you love will die. Everything you believe in will disappear.
Do you have the strength to maintain these thoughts, though the world around you will fall apart? If you weep and despair, and feel like everything is crumbling into dust, it's ok, you are doing it right.
It is hard, but keep at it. One day you will realise that you are trapping yourself. If nothing is permanent, if everything is inherently dissatisfying, then what is the point of living? You will look for escape routes. The mind is a fantastically tricky thing and will throw up lots of appealing alternatives.
Perhaps you will stop here. I am sure many do. But... what happens if you keep going? Commit yourself to finding out! You must be committed only to the truth, and nothing else. Nothing must get in your way. You must value the truth above your own life. Nothing else will do.
You will paint yourself into a corner. You will hit a solid wall of fear and confusion, and when you look back over your shoulder at where you have been, you will see that you have painted yourself into a corner and cannot go back.
You may suffer from insomnia and wander the streets at night restlessly. You may seek temporary escape from the truth in destructive ways. You may become depressed and afraid and alone. Everything will lose its colour, like a bad dream. Don't worry, you are doing it right.
What happens next is awesome, though it may not feel that way at the time.
Some small thing will happen, a dog will bark, or something, and then you will just give up.
You will give up the thing that you had been holding onto so tightly that you didn't even realise it.
And then you will die.
Really.
The crazy thing is that your body will go on living. And everyone around you won't even notice that you are dead, a part of your mind fused out and gone. You will notice the background hum has stopped.
I am not being melodramatic about the death, it will really feel that way. When you let go, you will lose something. But it was something that wasn't worth having in the first place because it was built on a lie. In the space it leaves, you will gain something else.
In the Buddhist canon you may find this described as 'winning the stream' or being 'sotapanna'.
Make of this what you will. It doesn't matter. My only advice, for what it's worth: follow the truth wherever it leads and look for the signs of death along the way.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
beings and their karma
Beings are the "owners" of their karma, and the "inheritors" of them in that they reap the fruits of them, that they have previously sown. However, I feel sometimes to be a passive observer of this process in my 'self'.
If I try too hard with my path then I find myself held back by defilements of mind. This results in a very peculiar mental feeling where one of the defilements becomes foremost in my mind instead of peaceful thoughts.
Likewise by concentrating too much on a defilement, and paying unwise attention to it, I find my path pulling me uncomfortably back in line through seeing anicca, dhukka and anatta. This means I cannot revel too much in the pleasure or hindrance I am focusing on.
This whole process of course leaves me in a state of disatisfaction because I can neither be entirely rapt in my pleasures or in my path. It's like there is always a fly in my soup!
Now... it has occurred to me that this process seems to have a life of its own and has very little to do with me. I feel that I am taking too much responsibility for my mental state at any given time, blaming my frustration on my own failings.
It is true that if there were no more defilements that this frustration would no longer occur. But in this particular reincarnation I have neither created these defilements not created any perfections of mind, for the most part.
By not feeling responsible for them, and not paying them so much attention, I feel that I am cultivating awareness of not-self (anatta).
It is hard, since I have always seen events in my own life as somehow being the result of my actions and thoughts, but this is not strictly true. They are merely events and ascribing ownership to them would be wrong.
In the constantly changing energy stream that is reality, events occur simply due to dependent arising, and cease to occur when the factors or causes change.
Obviously this process is not part of my sense of self. So, it seems wrong to me to say that I can create karma or destroy it. I can only say 'karma is created and destroyed', but not by me. I am nothing.
This would not have made sense to me some time ago, but now it does.
Is an enlightened being one who simply does not believe he or she can affect karma or effect its destruction, and so is at peace?
If I try too hard with my path then I find myself held back by defilements of mind. This results in a very peculiar mental feeling where one of the defilements becomes foremost in my mind instead of peaceful thoughts.
Likewise by concentrating too much on a defilement, and paying unwise attention to it, I find my path pulling me uncomfortably back in line through seeing anicca, dhukka and anatta. This means I cannot revel too much in the pleasure or hindrance I am focusing on.
This whole process of course leaves me in a state of disatisfaction because I can neither be entirely rapt in my pleasures or in my path. It's like there is always a fly in my soup!
Now... it has occurred to me that this process seems to have a life of its own and has very little to do with me. I feel that I am taking too much responsibility for my mental state at any given time, blaming my frustration on my own failings.
It is true that if there were no more defilements that this frustration would no longer occur. But in this particular reincarnation I have neither created these defilements not created any perfections of mind, for the most part.
By not feeling responsible for them, and not paying them so much attention, I feel that I am cultivating awareness of not-self (anatta).
It is hard, since I have always seen events in my own life as somehow being the result of my actions and thoughts, but this is not strictly true. They are merely events and ascribing ownership to them would be wrong.
In the constantly changing energy stream that is reality, events occur simply due to dependent arising, and cease to occur when the factors or causes change.
Obviously this process is not part of my sense of self. So, it seems wrong to me to say that I can create karma or destroy it. I can only say 'karma is created and destroyed', but not by me. I am nothing.
This would not have made sense to me some time ago, but now it does.
Is an enlightened being one who simply does not believe he or she can affect karma or effect its destruction, and so is at peace?
Friday, January 29, 2010
tantric practices are faster than others
If a desire is left entirely alone it will fade quickly. However, in most cases a rather lengthy withdrawal process is required.
Far better than avoiding the desire in action but internally longing for it, is to go to it willingly but snatch your head out of the lion's mouth at the last moment.
Go right up to the beautiful and desirable thing and look at it dispassionately in the full light of wisdom and reality. Watch the cracks appear and the desire start to crumble away. See the worm inside the apple.
All things, thoughts and conditioned states wear three marks:
The mark of impermanence, or anicca.
The mark of suffering, or dhukka.
The mark of not-self, or anatta.
It brings so much freedom in the mind and heart to see these marks in the things that would otherwise bind us with desire or fear.
Knowing what we are afraid of is impermanent makes all the difference. Seeing that within every desirable state or thing is a little kernel of suffering helps us not get (too) attached.
Understanding not-self, that we do not have an ego or controlling self, is a powerfully freeing thought; all our troubles, pain, happiness, hopes, plans and dreams wash up against... nothing. Leaving us free in this present moment to act as we will.
Which is all there is.
Far better than avoiding the desire in action but internally longing for it, is to go to it willingly but snatch your head out of the lion's mouth at the last moment.
Go right up to the beautiful and desirable thing and look at it dispassionately in the full light of wisdom and reality. Watch the cracks appear and the desire start to crumble away. See the worm inside the apple.
All things, thoughts and conditioned states wear three marks:
The mark of impermanence, or anicca.
The mark of suffering, or dhukka.
The mark of not-self, or anatta.
It brings so much freedom in the mind and heart to see these marks in the things that would otherwise bind us with desire or fear.
Knowing what we are afraid of is impermanent makes all the difference. Seeing that within every desirable state or thing is a little kernel of suffering helps us not get (too) attached.
Understanding not-self, that we do not have an ego or controlling self, is a powerfully freeing thought; all our troubles, pain, happiness, hopes, plans and dreams wash up against... nothing. Leaving us free in this present moment to act as we will.
Which is all there is.
Monday, January 25, 2010
cycles on the path
Whatever karma a person experiences at any given time will lay the seeds for future karma of the same type.
In plainer language; "a habit".
When these seeds of karma flower in any moment, then they affect our mood and cause a tendency to lay more seeds of karma to continue the same type of feeling in the future.
The accumulation of these karmic seeds are the 'kilesas', or 'defilements of mind'. They are called this because they are like stains on our spotless mind which, but for the kilesas, would sit in pure, contented awareness of the present moment.
These kilesas pull our minds into dualistic thinking and into thinking about the past and future. In other words, they create our sense of self as a function of time. Kilesas also being the cause of the mental hindrances, the hindrances cause us to lay future karmic seeds and so cause future kilesa, or defilements.
These karmic seeds bloom in a cyclical fashion. Due to their nature as habit-forming, they are regular, as opposed to pure mind which is spontaneous and "not in time".
What we felt last week on this same day will influence us, what we felt last month, last year at this time will influence us, and so on across the cycle of our lives from birth to death. There are also much longer cycles that affect us over spans of thousands or millions of years, like the cycle of bangs and crunches of the universe.
We can divide divide the flow of our lives arbitrarily into cycles of differing lengths. On the level of nanoseconds to years and further, these cycles are in a fractal form, each fragment mimicking the others in behaviour. These karmic cycles are the only things between us and nirvana. They are not dependant on circumstance, although certain circumstances may serve as a trigger for karmic seeds to bloom.
This is why sometimes we feel happy or sad "for no reason". These kilesas make us feel a particular way, like a 'mood' or 'colour' of the moment. Basically they put a compulsion or an emotional spin on the present moment which would not otherwise be there.
Our brains are machines for combining these compulsions and emotional colours with what we perceive to be our present surroundings and circumstances to create a "narrative within time" which forms the basis of our sense of self. Inconsistencies are ignored, things that bolster the narrative, i.e. fit well within the narrative, are emphasised by the mind.
This is why people "see what they want to see", and this is how karma colours our perception and prevents us from seeing mind and the present as it truly is; spontaneous and unadorned.
Enlightenment is breaking this narrative, this petty sense of self, thus freeing us from space and time. We trap ourselves in our own story until it is all that we know or feel comfortable with and we are afraid to leave. This is the endless sea of samsara. Endless, that is, until we see the true nature of mind and reality and choose to leave.
How do we do this? By breaking the narrative and so freeing our minds to be simply in the present, simply spontaneous.
We must stop making the link between our present circumstances (i.e. the actual things around you at any given moment) and the feelings, compulsions and emotional moods that fill our heads. They are not related at all. You have never lived this moment before, so how can you have an emotional or compulsive response to it? You don't even know what it is!!
The magga, or spiritual path, involves realising this nature of mind and refraining from acting upon these cyclical compulsions, therefore laying down no new karma. If we can do this, then when our old karma is exhausted, then there will be no more new karma and we will be free.
We must look for the true causes of our feelings. Sometimes we feel happy or sad, or angry or nostalgic, but the reasons are not obvious. One day we feel one way, and one day we feel another, where nothing has really changed. This is cyclical karma. At some time in the past, in a similar moment, you felt this way also but didn't know it for what it was, and didn't refrain from acting upon it. Because you acted upon it, karmic seeds were sown which are coming to fruition now. That is all.
If you are happy, don't cling to it, don't try to feel a certain way, just note what you are feeling and leave it at that. That is the holy life.
Meditation is the best, and I think only, way to train the mind to do this automatically. Meditation is the path, and without it progress is non-existent. Every time you exercise this faculty of "noting" but don't cling or try to change your feeling or circumstance, this is meditation. It can also be done at anytime, just by turning the mind to this technique of "noting without clinging".
This is the meaning behind the Tao Te Ching saying,
How can we "grasp" the whole of it? With an open hand and an empty mind. If we can do this, then we are reintegrated with our source, and have reached our end and returned to our beginning. This is the end of the holy life.
In plainer language; "a habit".
When these seeds of karma flower in any moment, then they affect our mood and cause a tendency to lay more seeds of karma to continue the same type of feeling in the future.
The accumulation of these karmic seeds are the 'kilesas', or 'defilements of mind'. They are called this because they are like stains on our spotless mind which, but for the kilesas, would sit in pure, contented awareness of the present moment.
These kilesas pull our minds into dualistic thinking and into thinking about the past and future. In other words, they create our sense of self as a function of time. Kilesas also being the cause of the mental hindrances, the hindrances cause us to lay future karmic seeds and so cause future kilesa, or defilements.
These karmic seeds bloom in a cyclical fashion. Due to their nature as habit-forming, they are regular, as opposed to pure mind which is spontaneous and "not in time".
What we felt last week on this same day will influence us, what we felt last month, last year at this time will influence us, and so on across the cycle of our lives from birth to death. There are also much longer cycles that affect us over spans of thousands or millions of years, like the cycle of bangs and crunches of the universe.
We can divide divide the flow of our lives arbitrarily into cycles of differing lengths. On the level of nanoseconds to years and further, these cycles are in a fractal form, each fragment mimicking the others in behaviour. These karmic cycles are the only things between us and nirvana. They are not dependant on circumstance, although certain circumstances may serve as a trigger for karmic seeds to bloom.
This is why sometimes we feel happy or sad "for no reason". These kilesas make us feel a particular way, like a 'mood' or 'colour' of the moment. Basically they put a compulsion or an emotional spin on the present moment which would not otherwise be there.
Our brains are machines for combining these compulsions and emotional colours with what we perceive to be our present surroundings and circumstances to create a "narrative within time" which forms the basis of our sense of self. Inconsistencies are ignored, things that bolster the narrative, i.e. fit well within the narrative, are emphasised by the mind.
This is why people "see what they want to see", and this is how karma colours our perception and prevents us from seeing mind and the present as it truly is; spontaneous and unadorned.
Enlightenment is breaking this narrative, this petty sense of self, thus freeing us from space and time. We trap ourselves in our own story until it is all that we know or feel comfortable with and we are afraid to leave. This is the endless sea of samsara. Endless, that is, until we see the true nature of mind and reality and choose to leave.
How do we do this? By breaking the narrative and so freeing our minds to be simply in the present, simply spontaneous.
We must stop making the link between our present circumstances (i.e. the actual things around you at any given moment) and the feelings, compulsions and emotional moods that fill our heads. They are not related at all. You have never lived this moment before, so how can you have an emotional or compulsive response to it? You don't even know what it is!!
The magga, or spiritual path, involves realising this nature of mind and refraining from acting upon these cyclical compulsions, therefore laying down no new karma. If we can do this, then when our old karma is exhausted, then there will be no more new karma and we will be free.
We must look for the true causes of our feelings. Sometimes we feel happy or sad, or angry or nostalgic, but the reasons are not obvious. One day we feel one way, and one day we feel another, where nothing has really changed. This is cyclical karma. At some time in the past, in a similar moment, you felt this way also but didn't know it for what it was, and didn't refrain from acting upon it. Because you acted upon it, karmic seeds were sown which are coming to fruition now. That is all.
If you are happy, don't cling to it, don't try to feel a certain way, just note what you are feeling and leave it at that. That is the holy life.
Meditation is the best, and I think only, way to train the mind to do this automatically. Meditation is the path, and without it progress is non-existent. Every time you exercise this faculty of "noting" but don't cling or try to change your feeling or circumstance, this is meditation. It can also be done at anytime, just by turning the mind to this technique of "noting without clinging".
This is the meaning behind the Tao Te Ching saying,
"you cannot improve the universe,The universe is whole and complete, if you try to grasp a part of it and cling to it with your mind, you will suffer.
if you try to grasp it, you will lose it,
if you try to change it, you will ruin it".
How can we "grasp" the whole of it? With an open hand and an empty mind. If we can do this, then we are reintegrated with our source, and have reached our end and returned to our beginning. This is the end of the holy life.
rebirth
What I consider to be "I", my narrative of events in time that I feel a sense of ownership towards, is not reborn.
What I am is merely an effect, a ripple of karma. I am not this karma, and it is not me, but it is my cause and I am its effect.
When I die and my mind disappears and my body dissolves, this karma remains. It was there before I was born and will be there after my death, unless it ceases earlier causing enlightenment.
This karma has been the cause of many beings and perhaps will be the cause of many more, but these beings and I are only related in this way, not in some other way.
This karma follows the cycle of birth -> growth -> stasis -> decay -> death and throughout this cycle will be the cause of many different beings.
Perhaps I am the last one.
This karma is constantly changing and this reflects in me, because it is my cause. Therefore I am constantly changing. This is anicca, or impermanence.
This karma is on a path, so too I am on a path, out of harmony with the eternally present due to 'action' and motion. This separation is the cause of suffering. This is dukkha, or suffering.
This karma is a natural phenomenon and has no 'controlling' aspect. So too I am a natural phenomenon and have no ego or controlling self independent of that. This is anatta, or not-self.
I have not caused what I feel. I do not own my past and future. When I die this karma goes on having effect, but I who never existed will continue to not exist, but for its effects.
Every cause has an effect, and when the cause comes to being, the effect also does. I came into being when that which caused me did.
Every effect has a cause, and when the cause ceases, the effect also does. I will cease when that which causes me ceases.
This is all. There is no birth, no death, just causes and effects. There is no rebirth, just cause and effect.
This is the meaning of rebirth.
What I am is merely an effect, a ripple of karma. I am not this karma, and it is not me, but it is my cause and I am its effect.
When I die and my mind disappears and my body dissolves, this karma remains. It was there before I was born and will be there after my death, unless it ceases earlier causing enlightenment.
This karma has been the cause of many beings and perhaps will be the cause of many more, but these beings and I are only related in this way, not in some other way.
This karma follows the cycle of birth -> growth -> stasis -> decay -> death and throughout this cycle will be the cause of many different beings.
Perhaps I am the last one.
This karma is constantly changing and this reflects in me, because it is my cause. Therefore I am constantly changing. This is anicca, or impermanence.
This karma is on a path, so too I am on a path, out of harmony with the eternally present due to 'action' and motion. This separation is the cause of suffering. This is dukkha, or suffering.
This karma is a natural phenomenon and has no 'controlling' aspect. So too I am a natural phenomenon and have no ego or controlling self independent of that. This is anatta, or not-self.
I have not caused what I feel. I do not own my past and future. When I die this karma goes on having effect, but I who never existed will continue to not exist, but for its effects.
Every cause has an effect, and when the cause comes to being, the effect also does. I came into being when that which caused me did.
Every effect has a cause, and when the cause ceases, the effect also does. I will cease when that which causes me ceases.
This is all. There is no birth, no death, just causes and effects. There is no rebirth, just cause and effect.
This is the meaning of rebirth.
the knot that cannot be untied
I'm not sure how it first popped into my mind, but this problem used to vex me as a child. Looking back I realise it was my first koan.
The answer is that there is no knot that cannot be untied.
In other words, all conditioned states are subject to dissolution. Our psyches and bodies will completely unravel; they contain their own distruction.
This world is a dream world, and we are all sleepers living out strange dreams. Each of us creates the world around us, the illusion becoming tighter and more structured, like a knot, until we lose our way back amid the topology.
Our way back to what? The void from when and where we came, which we carry around with us still.
We have black holes at our core, in our hearts, waiting to carry us home.
The answer is that there is no knot that cannot be untied.
In other words, all conditioned states are subject to dissolution. Our psyches and bodies will completely unravel; they contain their own distruction.
This world is a dream world, and we are all sleepers living out strange dreams. Each of us creates the world around us, the illusion becoming tighter and more structured, like a knot, until we lose our way back amid the topology.
Our way back to what? The void from when and where we came, which we carry around with us still.
We have black holes at our core, in our hearts, waiting to carry us home.
people are like ghosts
Barely do they pass on the street before they become a memory...
Standing under a heavy overcast sky, crackling with new energy, the sun a pale torch behind the clouds, I had a sudden view of the street in time-lapse.
My mind engaged into "sky time" and people became like ghosts hurrying around the street as if on rails. Like time lapse photography, only it was an actual view of an actual street by a pair of human eyes and a human brain.
It is unusual and exhilarating to radically change one's viewpoint.
It shows me we are all capable of great but hidden things.
Standing under a heavy overcast sky, crackling with new energy, the sun a pale torch behind the clouds, I had a sudden view of the street in time-lapse.
My mind engaged into "sky time" and people became like ghosts hurrying around the street as if on rails. Like time lapse photography, only it was an actual view of an actual street by a pair of human eyes and a human brain.
It is unusual and exhilarating to radically change one's viewpoint.
It shows me we are all capable of great but hidden things.
first glimpse of jhana
When I was on a ten-day silent retreat, I had climbed to the highest I had ever been. My mind was really almost still, but the thing stopping me from moving further was a low rustle of sense desire in the bottom of my mind.
It was impossible to quieten my mind further and later I realise it was being held back in this way by my sense desires at this moment that, at this moment, set me on the path of the Anagami. The path I am still on today.
At the retreat we had learnt about a teacher in the Burmese school of Buddhism called Mother Sayamagi who had reached the first jhana within minutes of being taught Anapana meditation. She had seen clouds or cotton wool, or something like that.
Well for two very brief instants, as brief as I have ever experienced, I saw a door opening with bright light behind it and also I saw in a separate instant a small blue pearl. Both of these images stick as firmly in my mind today, thirteen years later, as they did back then.
But when I reported this to the retreat teacher he seemed not to believe me. There was no way I could have seen them, he said. I suppose it was either that, or give up his seat to me.
I think there are two sorts of people who appear wise in the dharma; those who have studied the words of the Buddha very well and thoroughly and for a long time, and those who are actually wise in the dharma.
Theory is useless unless it is able to be put into practice. It is not an intellectual challenge, or a beautiful philosophical theory, but rather a daily way of life for, quite literally, life or death reasons.
It was impossible to quieten my mind further and later I realise it was being held back in this way by my sense desires at this moment that, at this moment, set me on the path of the Anagami. The path I am still on today.
At the retreat we had learnt about a teacher in the Burmese school of Buddhism called Mother Sayamagi who had reached the first jhana within minutes of being taught Anapana meditation. She had seen clouds or cotton wool, or something like that.
Well for two very brief instants, as brief as I have ever experienced, I saw a door opening with bright light behind it and also I saw in a separate instant a small blue pearl. Both of these images stick as firmly in my mind today, thirteen years later, as they did back then.
But when I reported this to the retreat teacher he seemed not to believe me. There was no way I could have seen them, he said. I suppose it was either that, or give up his seat to me.
I think there are two sorts of people who appear wise in the dharma; those who have studied the words of the Buddha very well and thoroughly and for a long time, and those who are actually wise in the dharma.
Theory is useless unless it is able to be put into practice. It is not an intellectual challenge, or a beautiful philosophical theory, but rather a daily way of life for, quite literally, life or death reasons.
stitched up
I had a dream that was not all a dream.
As if in a thick fog, I saw people walking with disfigured faces. Their eyes, ears, tongues, noses and skin were stitched closed with thread.
Like mannequins, or reanimated dead, they moved following the pulling of these threads. Everything grey and silent they moved to an invisible call, their loose strands streaming before them as if in a strong wind, like a streamer caught in a fan.
Bound at the five sense doors they were, and it seemed a nightmare until I spied one in the grey, lifeless automaton crowd with his colour intact and his eyes wide open.
Old and slow, yet unmoved by any wind. Even though he was bent and small I thought he was straighter and taller than all the rest. No threads; this man was free. I hope this man is me. He was beautiful.
As if in a thick fog, I saw people walking with disfigured faces. Their eyes, ears, tongues, noses and skin were stitched closed with thread.
Like mannequins, or reanimated dead, they moved following the pulling of these threads. Everything grey and silent they moved to an invisible call, their loose strands streaming before them as if in a strong wind, like a streamer caught in a fan.
Bound at the five sense doors they were, and it seemed a nightmare until I spied one in the grey, lifeless automaton crowd with his colour intact and his eyes wide open.
Old and slow, yet unmoved by any wind. Even though he was bent and small I thought he was straighter and taller than all the rest. No threads; this man was free. I hope this man is me. He was beautiful.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
desire and fear
We are bound by that which we desire as surely as we are by that which we fear. When we desire, we are made conscious of an emptiness inside ourselves. This emptiness does not exist, but rather is an illusion of our culture and conditioning. All desire stems from illusory needs, which can be satisfied from within by becoming aware of their non-existence.
This is why the antidote for desire is awareness of anicca, or the constant change inherent in all things. Without fixity, desire becomes meaningless.
Fear arises when we become aware of something which repels us. It repels us because we recognise that it exists inside of us. If we are afraid of death, it is only because death is an innate part of our existence. Each day billions of our body's cells die and are recreated anew, This is a foreign world to our conditioned consciousness.
The antidote to fear is assimilation, or acceptance. When we understand and accept our fear for what it is, we are accepting that part of ourselves that made us afraid, and we become more whole.
Awareness of dhukka, or the inherent unsatisfactoriness inherent in all things, overcomes fear because as we accept dhukka we no longer fear it. As dhukka is an integral part of ourselves and the world, we become more accepting of ourselves and the world; the travails of life no longer burden our minds.
Desire and fear are complementary; they are like vectors pulling us in opposite directions. Therefore cruel intentions may be redeemed through understanding, and peace found through acceptance of our failing.
Too often we give in and do the easy thing, when a little conflict is what we really need!
This is why the antidote for desire is awareness of anicca, or the constant change inherent in all things. Without fixity, desire becomes meaningless.
Fear arises when we become aware of something which repels us. It repels us because we recognise that it exists inside of us. If we are afraid of death, it is only because death is an innate part of our existence. Each day billions of our body's cells die and are recreated anew, This is a foreign world to our conditioned consciousness.
The antidote to fear is assimilation, or acceptance. When we understand and accept our fear for what it is, we are accepting that part of ourselves that made us afraid, and we become more whole.
Awareness of dhukka, or the inherent unsatisfactoriness inherent in all things, overcomes fear because as we accept dhukka we no longer fear it. As dhukka is an integral part of ourselves and the world, we become more accepting of ourselves and the world; the travails of life no longer burden our minds.
Desire and fear are complementary; they are like vectors pulling us in opposite directions. Therefore cruel intentions may be redeemed through understanding, and peace found through acceptance of our failing.
Too often we give in and do the easy thing, when a little conflict is what we really need!
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