How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

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Saengnapha
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by Saengnapha »

Sam Vara wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:34 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:32 pm My friend U.G. spoke about what happened to him in extensive interviews and video recordings. There came a moment when he saw clearly how he was fooling himself. The deception, he called it. His whole existence as U.G. disappeared. It was something unexpected and completely not what he had thought it would be. It left him functioning without this perversion of perception. It was a kind of death and regeneration. There were all kinds of unusual things that happened but none of that mattered to him. He was 'free', living in what he called 'The Natural State'. I have never run across another like him. His honesty was a challenge to anyone who ever met him. He was unfettered in every way I could see. He described his 'calamity' as to something like a vacuum cleaner sucking everything he knew out of him, cleansing him of all knowledge, personal and cultural, right down to his cells. U.G. never reappeared. It took awhile to readjust to this. His recognition of things came back slowly. Sometimes he would point and ask what that was. When told, he would say, oh yes. There was nothing personal in all this. It was all activities of the body that he talked about, not about you and me and getting somewhere. There was nowhere for him. No time nor space, yet he knew if he needed to do something or see someone. He was completely ordinary, yet completely impersonal, never cold, often humorous, and strangely silent at times. I could go on but this is not my intention to do this here. My intention of mentioning him is to show that this awakening is possible and that it may not be what you are expecting. We are full of images of what the Buddha was and what he represented. The problem with most of us is that we've never met anyone who came into that state and we have only words to go by. U.G. insisted that the words are to be let go of.
Are these interviews and videos in the public domain? This sounds like a very interesting individual who we might learn from.
Yes. I have also posted a separate thread on U.G. here.
Saengnapha
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by Saengnapha »

paul wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 7:19 pm View comes first, not perception, that's why right view is the first link of the path. Regarding the OP, the important part of the Analayo quote is

“Sustained contemplation of impermanence leads to a shift in one’s normal way of experiencing reality”,

so at every opportunity the awareness of impermanence should be consolidated, that is when a sense impression, a smell or a sight of evidence of dissolution is encountered it should be identified as “decay of the human body”. It is only in this way that right view is established, leading to a shift in perception in line with reality. As well as fortuitous encounters, arranged viewings of autopsies or dead bodies, visits to hospitals or even doctor’s waiting rooms should be made. Without systematic development of this practice, the mind will continue to be carried along by the current of delusion, the 'normal' way. Right view goes against the current and so requires intentional effort. Where conventional view ceases, that's where the tangle is cut.
How is this different from a kind of brainwashing? What is mind? Is it not the accumulated images of experiences through the process of perception? This is all a learned activity and conditioned. It does not dismantle the dream of existence that you continuously tell yourself through your thinking that you are alive. A conditioned thing cannot free itself. It is part of that process. Any shift of mind is a shift to another narrative. Some narratives have less 'problems' associated with them, but remain narratives, nonetheless. Only dispassion goes against the current and when you are trying so hard to attain something, there is no dispassion operating.
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Sam Vara
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by Sam Vara »

Saengnapha wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:35 am
Yes. I have also posted a separate thread on U.G. here.
Many thanks, Saengnapha. I'll enjoy reading those posts later today.
binocular
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by binocular »

SarathW wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 8:46 pmWhat if your father put them in the garbage bin and the smell coming from it?
I have prepared a way for dealing with smelly organic remains; and that is to put them in a bowl and place the bowl outside on the terrace. My father doesn't do that.
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
paul
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by paul »

Indoctrination is inevitable, it occurs either through society and advertising, where the individual takes a passive role and is carried along by the current of samsara without question, or where they decide to strike out and work out their own salvation along the Buddhist path. For the Buddhist aspirant right view has two stages, the conceptual and the experiential, and the step from one to the other begins with the isolation and categorisation of samsara as an objective entity. Where there is still immersion in the current of samsara with no objective grasp of it, then the experiential path cannot be attained. Insight can only begin when the duality of samsara and nibbana has been conceptually separated, agreed to and established. It is then that samsara is allowed to become the raw material for the operation of mindfulness and the dynamic of the path is released. This separation is achieved by developing the perception of impermanence in the cycles of samsara. Impressing the truth of reality experientially upon the mind is achieved by systematically identifying impermanence of the body, which is the most powerful agent to hammer it home, but identifying impermanence in any form of materiality is also profitable. Then the illusion of continuity generated by surface appearance is broken. This is the shift in perception that Analayo refers to:

“Sustained contemplation of impermanence leads to a shift in one’s normal way of experiencing reality”

This reversal of position means the individual goes from being the victim of samsara to utilizing it for their own benefit, and this achievement has millennial implications in accord with the emerging view of the human condition.
Saengnapha
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by Saengnapha »

paul wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:58 pm Indoctrination is inevitable, it occurs either through society and advertising, where the individual takes a passive role and is carried along by the current of samsara without question, or where they decide to strike out and work out their own salvation along the Buddhist path. For the Buddhist aspirant right view has two stages, the conceptual and the experiential, and the step from one to the other begins with the isolation and categorisation of samsara as an objective entity. Where there is still immersion in the current of samsara with no objective grasp of it, then the experiential path cannot be attained. Insight can only begin when the duality of samsara and nibbana has been conceptually separated, agreed to and established. It is then that samsara is allowed to become the raw material for the operation of mindfulness and the dynamic of the path is released. This separation is achieved by developing the perception of impermanence in the cycles of samsara. Impressing the truth of reality experientially upon the mind is achieved by systematically identifying impermanence of the body, which is the most powerful agent to hammer it home, but identifying impermanence in any form of materiality is also profitable. Then the illusion of continuity generated by surface appearance is broken. This is the shift in perception that Analayo refers to:

“Sustained contemplation of impermanence leads to a shift in one’s normal way of experiencing reality”

This reversal of position means the individual goes from being the victim of samsara to utilizing it for their own benefit, and this achievement has millennial implications in accord with the emerging view of the human condition.
I understand what you are saying but this is not release from the cycle of perception and the penetration into 'things the way they are'. Analayo's quote is still a conceptually conceived position replete with subject/object and an experiencer. It is not the same as cessation of continuity, which is what Punnaji calls 'the end of the dream of existence'. It is just a shift in conceptualizing all of this that makes you feel as if you've understood something. This is not easy to understand as the mind cannot conceive of such a thing. It wants to be present at its own funeral waving goodbye. You cannot experience reality because there is no entity at all that experiences anything.
binocular
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Re: How to exercise sense restraint in instances where aversion might arise?

Post by binocular »

Saengnapha wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 2:00 amI understand what you are saying but this is not release from the cycle of perception and the penetration into 'things the way they are'. Analayo's quote is still a conceptually conceived position replete with subject/object and an experiencer. It is not the same as cessation of continuity, which is what Punnaji calls 'the end of the dream of existence'. It is just a shift in conceptualizing all of this that makes you feel as if you've understood something. This is not easy to understand as the mind cannot conceive of such a thing. It wants to be present at its own funeral waving goodbye. You cannot experience reality because there is no entity at all that experiences anything.
This problem has been discussed here at some length, for example: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=27731&p=395041
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
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