Showing posts with label Dispassion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dispassion. Show all posts
Just some random short notes I have been wanting to jot down, reflecting my current understanding as experiential insight deepens in my practice.

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Many people mistaken letting go and dispassion in terms of dissociation (a subject 'letting go' and 'standing back' from object). This is not true letting go or dispassion.

'In the seen just the seen' with no 'you in terms of that' is true dispassion. It is the state where each sound, each color, each sensation is happening on its own, manifests on its own as its own radiance, and yet there is completely no additional fabrication, or whatever kind of identity in relation to that. This complete emptiness of any kind of identity and clinging or subject-object relation in relation to 'in the seen just the seen', 'in the heard just the heard' is true dispassion.

A dissociated state is just another form of grasping, attachment. It is attaching at 'something' or 'someone' being more true and real than the rest of the field.

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There's absolutely no need to attempt to bring anything whatsoever, presence, witnessing, whatever, into sleep or any states (waking, dreaming, and deep sleep). Any dualistic effort is a form of doing. Bringing in a watcher is karma. All dharmas, all phenomena, are fundamentally quiescent as nirvana, fundamentally non-arising and naturally manifesting as one's own state of radiance. Therefore true practice is resting in the natural, spontaneous perfection of luminosity and emptiness. Practice becomes dynamic rather than technique-bound as the spontaneous unfolding or self-arising of all displays, activities, sounds, colors, sensations, gets auto-actualized as the wisdom of luminous-emptiness. Everything arises as the state of meditation, which is non-meditation. Yet this requires anatta and emptiness as pre-requisite.


Therefore, it is always the eventuality of every practitioner to discover that spontaneous perfection is the only course of liberation. Yet one must also be wary of falling into a nihilistic extreme of interpreting non-action as not needing practice or effort. We still have to meditate, but this meditation becomes directionless (or more accurately, aimlessness and wishlessness -- one of the three doors of liberation) and without subject-object (I'm here, trying to get 'there') but immediate practice-enlightenment or instant actualization in every encounter or activity, sitting, walking, working, encountering people. This effort is not the same as the dualistic effort of trying to attain a result in the future, or trying to sustain a subject/object structure by bringing in a dualistic form of watching.

There can and should be effort and focus in practice, but this effort and focus is applied in a way that completely dissolves the subject/object structure rather than retain or strengthen it, for example when being mindful of the breathing, the breathing is its own attention and awareness, there is no dualistic attempt to 'shine the spotlight of awareness on an object or a subject'. Effort and focus, and effortlessness becomes one. This is why Dogen's teachings are very useful here to counteract the nihilism of the wrongful understanding of non-action.  The kind of "doing" or "action" we should be rid of is not "don't have to make any effort" but "not being affected by results/gain/loss", for it is the attachment to the results that are karmic. Each step, each breath, becomes the ends rather than the means -- it is the actualization of enlightenment/Buddha-nature rather than a means to get enlightenment in the future.

And this, also happens to be true non-meditation and non-action, beyond the sense of there being a meditator-meditation and actor-action.




"One time, Huineng, old Buddha of Caoxi, asked a monk, "do you depend upon practice and enlightenment?."

The monk replied,
"It's not that there is no practice and no enlightenment. Its just that it's not possible to divide them".

This being so, know that the undividedness of practice and enlightenment is itself the Buddha ancestors.

A walk with Dogen into our time xxv
The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master"
 

"Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things."

(Dhammapada verse 113)

"What Daniel spoke abt impermance, 成住坏空 (formation, dwelling, decay and dissolution ) of the body...even sore throat is very important...u must learn to deeply treasure this truth and allow dispassion to liberate us. This is most important. We think that we understand but we don't...not even a percent...lol

Dispassion is the cause of unbinding and cessation."

- Thusness

"[A monk said:] "'Dhamma-teacher, Dhamma-teacher' they say, Lord."

"If, monk, anyone teaches a doctrine of disenchantment[1] with decay-and-death, of dispassion[2] [leading to] its cessation, that suffices for him to be called a monk who teaches Dhamma.[3]
"If anyone has trained himself in this disenchantment with decay-and-death, in dispassion[4] [leading to] its cessation, that suffices for him to be called a monk who is trained in what is in conformity with Dhamma.[5]
"If anyone, through disenchantment with decay-and-death, through dispassion [leading to] its cessation, is liberated from grasping, that suffices for him to be called one who has attained Nibbaana in this life."[6]" - Dhammakathiko Sutta

"1. Bhikkhu Sutta. A monk who knows decay and death, birth, becoming, grasping, craving, etc., their arising, their cessation and the way thereto such a monk stands knocking at the door of Deathlessness." S.ii.43.

"..."The blood you have shed when, arrested as thieves plundering villages, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as highway thieves, you had your heads cut off... when, arrested as adulterers, you had your heads cut off: Long has this been greater than the water in the four great oceans.
"Why is that? From an inconceivable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabrications, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."

That is what the Blessed One said. Gratified, the monks delighted in the Blessed One's words. And while this explanation was being given, the minds of the thirty monks from Pava — through lack of clinging — were released from fermentations." - Timsa Sutta

"...disenchantment has knowledge & vision of things as they actually are present as its prerequisite, dispassion has disenchantment as its prerequisite, release has dispassion as its prerequisite, knowledge of ending has release as its prerequisite.." - Upanisa Sutta

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Verse 347: The Story of Theri Khema

While residing at the Veluvana monastery, the Buddha uttered Verse (347) of this book,
with reference to Queen Khema.

Queen Khema was the chief queen of King Bimbisara. She was very beautiful
and also very proud of her looks and status...

The king wanted her to go to the Veluvana monastery and pay homage to the Buddha.
But she had heard that the Buddha always talked disparagingly about beauty and she
therefore tried to avoid seeing the Buddha.

The king understood her attitude towards the Buddha; he also know how proud she was of
her beauty. So the king ordered his minstrels to sing in praise of the Veluvana monastery,
about its pleasant and peaceful atmosphere, etc. Hearing them, Queen Khema became
interested and decided to set out for the Veluvana monastery.

When Queen Khema arrived at the monastery, the Buddha was expounding the Dhamma to an
audience. By his supernormal power, the Buddha made a very beautiful young lady appear,
sitting not far from him, and fanning him. When Queen Khema came to the audience hall, she
alone saw the beautiful young lady. Comparing the exquisite beauty of the young lady to that
of her own, Khema realized, that her beauty was much inferior to that of the young lady. As
she looked again intently at the young lady her beauty began to fade gradually. In the end,
she saw before her eyes an old decrepit being, which again changed into a corpse, her
stinking body being attacked by maggots. At that instant, Queen Khema realized the
impermanence and worthlessness of beauty.

The Buddha knowing the state of her mind remarked, "O Khema! Look carefully at this
decaying body, which is built around a skeleton of bones and is subject to disease and decay.
Look carefully at the body, which is thought of so highly by the foolish. Look at the
worthlessness of the beauty of this young girl." After hearing this, Queen Khema attained
Sotapatti Fruition.

Then the Buddha spoke in verse as follows:

Verse 347. Beings who are infatuated with lust, fall back into the Stream of craving they have
generated themselves, just as a spider does in the web it has spun. The Wise, cutting off the bond
of craving, walk on resolutely, leaving, all pains (dukkha) behind.

At the end of the discourse Queen Khema attained Arahatship and was admitted to the
Order and became the Chief Female Disciple of the Buddha.

Translated by Daw Mya Tin, M.A.,
Burma Pitaka Association, Rangoon, Burma 1986.