Hi Mike,mikenz66 wrote:Hmmm, you're just confusing me even more now. You seem to post extensively with what to me look like non-dual arguments against standard Theravada interpretations of the Dhamma.
I don't post much for the most part, as there isn't much need to elaborate further on what other members have already adequately stated. The few threads where I have replied pertain to issues where I feel that I can offer another perspective (still within the historical Pāḷi dhamma and contemporary Theravāda fold).
Pretty simple really: the three N's:mikenz66 wrote:If I've completely misunderstood your entire argument, that's OK since I never felt I grasped it very well in the first place...
1. Not wavering (i.e. the development of sīla)
2. Non-distraction (i.e. the development of samādhi)
3. Not grasping (i.e. the development of paññā)
Ajahn Chah explains the development of the latter two quite nicely in the following:
- If the breath is coarse, we know that it's coarse, if it's subtle we know that it's subtle. As it becomes increasingly fine we keep following it, while simultaneously awakening the mind. Eventually the breath disappears altogether and all that remains is the feeling of wakefulness. This is called meeting the Buddha. We have that clear wakefulness that is called "Buddho," the one who knows, the one who is awake, the radiant one. It is meeting and dwelling with the Buddha, with knowledge and clarity. For it was only the historical flesh-and-blood Buddha that entered parinibbana; the true Buddha, the Buddha that is clear radiant knowing, we can still experience and attain today, and when we do so the heart is one.
So let go, put everything down, everything except the knowing. Don't be fooled if visions or sounds arise in your mind during meditation. Put them all down. Don't take hold of anything at all. Just stay with this non-dual awareness. Don't worry about the past or the future, just be still and you will reach the place where there's no advancing, no retreating and no stopping, where there's nothing to grasp at or cling to. Why? Because there's no self, no "me" or "mine." It's all gone. The Buddha taught us to be emptied of everything in this way, not to carry anything with us. To know, and having known, let go.
Realizing the Dhamma, the path to freedom from the round of birth and death, is a job that we all have to do alone.
Geoff