LIFT THE PAINTED VEIL AND SEE THE WORLD!

This completes a cycle of projects.  Lift the painted veil (the mental film of ideas and points of views) and see what the world really looks like.

The world is neutral. We decide that we like this, we don’t like that.

We like the good times, the good experiences.

We don’t like the bad times, the bad experiences: birth, pain, illness, old age, death.

We can’t escape birth, pain, illness, old age, and death.

If we decide “the gain is worth the pain”, we carry on getting born i.e. Acquiring a body so that we can experience these things.

If we decide the gain is not worth the pain, we go about not getting any more bodies, not being born again.

If we can’t make up our minds, we go on getting born and experiencing the good and the bad until we do.

It’s forever either way.

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it ─he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
                                                          —Shelley




New Project: DON'T PUT FUEL ON THE FIRE

WAX FRUIT or REAL FRUIT?

COMMENT:

Coffee or Tea? and Wax Fruit or Real Fruit? are not the same. Coffee or Tea? is offering you a choice.  Wax Fruit or Real Fruit? is not offering you a choice.  It is asking whether what you are looking at now is real fruit or a fake.  There is no choice.  If what you are looking at is a fake, there is no reason why there should be any real fruit somewhere else, for you to choose.  If there seems to be, you would have to examine it.  It may also be a fake.  It may be that all the fruit everywhere, including Heaven, is a fake.  In that case there is no choice.

The "fruit" is the fruit of life, of being born.  Body and Mind.

The body and mind that you are looking at and which you call your own (or maybe yours on loan) is it real?  Or is it a mass of inconvenience and suffering; painful birth, difficult early years when you are wholly dependent on others, ill health, old age (if it lasts that long), and unwanted death (or if wanted, only because the suffering becomes great enough).

Real or fake?  Desirable or undesirable.

What did Buddha say about mind and body (= nama-rupa = the five groups of existence)?

"Whatever there is of material shape, feeling, perception, the habitual (latent) tendencies, consciousness - he (the wise man) considers these things as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as an imposthume, as a dart, as a misfortune, as an affliction, as alien, as decay, empty, not-self."

And having seen this, what should he do?

"He turns his mind from these things; and when he has turned his mind from these things he focuses his mind on the deathless element, thinking: ‘This is the real, this the excellent, that is to say the tranquillising of all the activities, the casting out of all clinging, the destruction of craving, dispassion, stopping, Nibbāna."

Source: Mahāmālunkyasutta of Majjhima Nikāya.



New Project: LIFT THE PAINTED VEIL AND SEE THE WORLD!

AM I A MANGY DOG?

Whichever way you look at it, mange is suffering. From a simple point of view, the dog suffers because it has a body. If it didn't, it wouldn't.

We suffer physically because we have a body. We suffer mentally because we have a mind.

No mind, no body - no suffering.

So why do we have a body and a mind? Because we want a mind and a body.

Why do we want them?

Because we have a viewpoint which sees them as wantable.

So what's the answer. Examine them afresh and see what the reality is. Desirable or undesirable?

The next time you have a headache, consider that it might be because you have a head.

NEW PROJECT: WAX FRUIT OR REAL FRUIT?

THE DOG WITH MANGE

If I'm irritated, the people I meet irritate me. If I'm greedy, my attention is continually caught by voluptuous sense objects. My point of view is that it is the people who irritate me and the sense objects that attract me.

(And yet that dog with mange

is still oblivious to change;

continues ill at ease

in shade, hot sun or breeze.)

The sense objects make up the world. They are all quite neutral. It is we who project our states of mind onto them. Ultimately, we don't have total control of the outside world. But we can have control over inside world - our minds. If I am never irritable, no-one can ever irritate me.

It all comes down to the struggle to survive,

the endlessly obstructed urge just to stay alive.

All (including dog) use just one rule as measure;

avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure.

Pain leaves an imprint which says, “Leave it be!”

The sirens of pleasure leave a note, “Follow me!”

Withdrawal from the world of pain and pleasure is the answer. Not trying to shape that world to fit our desires.

NEW PROJECT: AM I A MANGY DOG?

MĀRA'S DAUGHTERS

Māra comes from the root mr which means die or dying. So Māra is the god (deva) of Death or the Dying God (or both).  His heaven world is the highest of those devoted to sensual pleasures.  Like all other gods, he is not immortal, though his lifespan is inconceivably long compared to that of a man.  His heaven world is filled with those who have devoted their lives to sensual pleasures (see the sutta about Māra's Net).  But those who pursue indulgence in sense pleasures (including Māra himself), have to be born into a world (heavenly or otherwise) where sense objects are available in order to enjoy them.  Being born, they will have to die.

This is the flaw in Māra's world, his followers and his own being.  He devotes himself to activities which everywhere and always result in death.  Escape from death is only to be found by rejecting the pursuit of sense pleasures and therefore not being born.

When Māra realised that the Buddha was attempting to find this escape route from birth and death into the deathless (amara = a + māra), he tried to prevent him.  He saw that, if beings responded to the Buddha's teaching, they would escape from his net and he would lose his power both here and. in his heaven world.

So he sent his daughters, Tanhā, Arati and Rāga, to tempt the Buddha back into the plane of being where the pursuit of sense pleasures is the goal.

Tanhā means compulsive thirst, like that of an alcoholic for alcohol; and therefore craving.  There is sensual craving, craving for existence and craving for non-existence.  Sensual craving is craving for the six sense objects.  Craving for existence is craving for the world of the senses or the world of form or the formless world.  Craving for non-existence is craving for extermination.

Rāga means sensual desire.

Arati (a + rati) is the opposite of Rāga and therefore means aversion. Rati [Classic Sk. rati, fr. ram] means love, attachment, pleasure. As a proper name, Rati is the goddess of lust and pleasure.



RATI

Māra's daughters, therefore, represent those things which stand between us and the goal of amara.

How did the Buddha overcome them?

NEW PROJECT: THE DOG WITH MANGE

Note: "During the years when the Lord Buddha was alive, he told a story of a dog with mange. When it stayed in a cave it thought that the cave was uncomfortable and the dog itched all over. It moved to a forest and still it itched and was uncomfortable. It was never comfortable no matter where it went. This is because what was causing the itching was its skin condition, not the place it stayed."

THE FIRE SERMON

Āditta is adjectival and means burning. There are two Fire Sermons. In one the Sense Bases are said to be burning. In the other it is the Khandhas. It comes to the same thing.

At any point at which the senses contact the sense objects (i.e. the world), fire blazes up. This fire is said to be the fire of raga, dosa and moha. In some translations, raga is wrongly translated as "passion". Passion is a strong feeling but it can also be used to describe dosa (hatred) so it is clear that the Buddha had something else in mind. Raga means "strong desire".

Greed (lobha) is strong desire also. So we can see that the fires that ignite at sense contact are in fact the first three kilesas: 1. Greed (lobha) 2. Hate (dosa) 3. Delusion (moha). 

This is the link with last week's project. 

Kilesas 4 to 10: 4. conceit (māna) 5. view points (ditthi) 6. doubt (vicikicchā) 7. mental torpor (thīna) 8. restlessness (uddhacca) 9. shamelessness (ahirika) 10. moral recklessness (anottappa), can all be derived from the first three. If the first three are completely eradicated, the others disappear also.

The Buddha goes on to explain that these three are the fires of suffering (birth, old age etc.). When things are seen like this rather than as sense objects with desirable characteristics, there is a turning away from the sense objects (nibbindati, literally "withdrawing seeing from"). A turning away from the world. At this point, desire ceases (viraga) and release is obtained. This is the extinction of the asavas.

NEW PROJECT: MĀRA'S DAUGHTERS

KILESA SPOTTING CONTINUED

KILESAS, like actors and criminals, appear in disguise, sometimes with masks depicting virtues:

GREED as NEED or entitlement to my share.

HATE as the perception of someone else's faults and a humanitarian impulse to make him aware of them and firmly help him change for the better or in the name of justice get rid of him altogether. (He deserves it).

DELUSION as VISION of how much better things could be if people listened to me. Or how much better they actually are if they looked at them from my point of view.

CONCEIT as HUMILITY (in contrast to the pride of others) or justified pride in genuine achievement (in contrast to the sniping of those who would if they could but don't appreciate all the hard work that has gone into this).

VIEWPOINTS as TRUTH. The way I see it is how it is. The way it is is how I see it. (It is I who can see things as they are. Others have viewpoints).

DOUBT as DESIRE for CERTAINTY and TRUTH. It would be silly to commit myself before I am sure.

MENTAL TORPOR as THE NEED for a rest or as a SUBLIME STATE - Samadhi, Nirodha.

RESTLESSNESS as INVESTIGATION, CURIOSITY, the need to move on, energy, the Life Force.

SHAMELESSNESS as my right to FREEDOM to be as I am, to be the way I was made, (to do what I am strong enough to get away with).

MORAL RECKLESSNESS as my right to FREEDOM to follow my desires and do what I want.

New Project: AN INTENSIVE COURSE IN KILESA SPOTTING

KILESA SPOTTING IN CONVERSATION

Kilesas can be found in thoughts, speech and deeds.

The mind is so volatile that it is difficult to spot them in thinking. By the time they appear in deeds, something has already been done and a karmic chain is underway.

That leaves speech. One can listen to others speaking and, more difficult, one can listen to oneself speaking and try and spot them there. 

The aim in all this is to become an expert kilesa spotter so that one can get on with the job of ridding oneself of them forever. Once the impurities have been removed from the water, it is already pure.

New Project: KILESA SPOTTING CONTINUED