John Ahn wrote in Dharma Connection:

It is a bit chilly outside today and I do not want to go outside. So I would like to share a bit on anatta and what I have been going through:

In my experience so far, there is a great distance between the initial insight into anatta and its actualization. I would say much of the difficulties actually come from the latter phase.

There are a few groups I have seen online that have shared the experience of selflessness but mostly, I realize now, they are talking about impersonality. So either physicality or divine consciousness becomes the direction of development. Anatta is not like that..its is truly the full emergence of the scenery that is the sound, sensation, taste, vision, etc. When inner and outer begin to dissolve, all appearances begin to share an equal taste of direct pristiness. Pristiness as in, this very sound, it has no past, future, or context..even the understanding of dependent origination does not escape this direct pristiness, let alone pure consciousness.

Anatta is great simplicity. There is no need to elaborate so much on its workings or its larger implications. Just this sound...that is enough, and one will not experience anything truer. Make your entire being like the sound of the bird chirping...direct, ephemeral and without center. It is a magnificent scenary painting itself effortlessly .

The main difficulties of fully actualizing this realization come from latent tendencies. You can actually view much of spirituality in this context of getting rid of impulses that have been engraved into you body, mind, energies, emotions due to the ignorance of selfhood. And these bonds run deep. The so called direct path groups who justify all modes of livelihood by saying its anyway just a selfless workings of the universe, expressions of divinity, etc...do not have an understanding or experience of anatta, or the intellect has twisted it. The more apparent anatta becomes, the stronger one will begin to feel the dualistic bonds. Since when it is the mere scenery..how can it desire? How can it posess? Simply sit, and the magnficence is there, simply walk, and it is such a subtly beautiful play of movement, the ground, the air.

Yet then the impulses come in many forms and with such strength. The scenery often becomes an unconscious drive to posess and to achieve. And the knowing is there that these are remnants of the past, now more amplified than even before, because the floodgates are being opened up as self control dissolves into naturalness. And here one faces troubles...how should I cope with the urge of the senses? These defilements? This ugliness? And it is ugliness all the way through. Do not justify them via the mind. When the sublimeness of mere scenery begins to soak all experience...the whole egoic story begins to look really ugly. But it still comes...heh..from very deep within the sense of purpose and desire (for anything) is carved in there. It is what drives anyone to move and act, otherwise, simply sitting..directionless..complete.

And the ugliest of all is the effort towards buddhahood. I want to become a Buddha! Lol. Really, the sky is more Buddha than a statue or a picture. This chair is more of a temple then anywhere else.

Letting these bonds work themselves out, while not deviating from the realization of anatta, is my current path. And it will take a lifetime since that bond..it is what drives our lives in one direction over another. But always, every action should be to dissolve purpose and direction. Fulfilling one`s destiny or whatever, is to release oneself these self imposed purposes...until one can become like the winds and the sun, where nothing is done but everything is accomplished.

Anyway..some sharings...
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